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Tonight Show to Four Nights

T

TheBigA

This is an interesting move. NBC is cutting The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon to four nights a week:

variety.com

NBC Pulls Back ‘Tonight Show’ to Four Nights Per Week

NBC will pull 'Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" to four nights a week as TV networks look to shore up declines in late-night economics
variety.com variety.com

They will air repeats on Fridays. Why? Because linear TV is losing audience, and Friday nights are low viewership nights.

You think streaming is only hurting radio? You think cutbacks are only happening in radio? Look again.
 
KeithE4 said:
Deja vu Johnny Carson all over again.
Click to expand...

Correct. But for a different reason. Johnny didn't want to work 5 nights. Neither did Letterman. Dave would often tape an extra show during the week so he could have Fridays off (and go to Montana). But it was an original show. Carson brought in a guest host.

This isn't about the host wanting a night off. It's about cutting costs because viewership on Fridays is not enough to pay for an original show.4

Remember when one of the networks wanted to cut prime time at 10PM? This is part of that. That's next.
 
Maybe the day will come when local TV stations start signing off between Midnight or 1 AM and 4 or 5 AM again. Not tomorrow or next year, but in another decade.
 
TheBigA said:
Correct. But for a different reason. Johnny didn't want to work 5 nights. Neither did Letterman. Dave would often tape an extra show during the week so he could have Fridays off (and go to Montana). But it was an original show. Carson brought in a guest host.
Click to expand...
IIRC, Carson had one night with a guest host, three new shows, and a rerun, at least later on.
 
KeithE4 said:
Maybe the day will come when local TV stations start signing off between Midnight or 1 AM and 4 or 5 AM again. Not tomorrow or next year, but in another decade.
Click to expand...
The NYC O&Os essentially do. WNBC & WABC air reruns all night, and WCBS & WNYW uses some infomercials and reruns

This is WNBC:
12:35a - Late Night
1:35a - News4 at 11 (rerun)
2:06a - NBC Nightly News (rerun)
2:36a - Access Hollywood (rerun)
3:05a - Kelly Clarkson (rerun)
4:00a - Early Today

But with modern automation, there's very little reason to actually sign off. Taped programs will happily run for 2.5 hours with little to no intervention.
 
TheBigA said:
Correct. But for a different reason. Johnny didn't want to work 5 nights. Neither did Letterman. Dave would often tape an extra show during the week so he could have Fridays off (and go to Montana). But it was an original show. Carson brought in a guest host.

This isn't about the host wanting a night off. It's about cutting costs because viewership on Fridays is not enough to pay for an original show.4

Remember when one of the networks wanted to cut prime time at 10PM? This is part of that. That's next.
Click to expand...
New scripted shows have been disappearing on Network TV for a long time. "Survivor" became a huge hit and that helped bring in Reality Shows. They are far cheaper to produce. The days of MASH, BONANZA, SEINFELD are long long gone.

When ratings shrink, revenue usually dries up. Fallon is working in a much different era than Carson. Carson was great, but viewers didn't have the plethora of choices that exist now. Even 40 or 50 years ago, shows that didn't get ratings got cancelled after one or two seasons.

I remember when McLean Stevenson decided to leave MASH. He later admitted he made a bad decision, because viewers loved his Henry Blake character. The shows he did after tanked...
 
Boy, not a surprise! However, I wonder if they will pull a Kimmel and start doing guest hosts on one of those nights? That's how Leno got the job at NBC. It was all those Monday nights he filled in for Carson.
Besides, late night TV isn't appointment viewing anymore. I can't recall laughing at anything Fallon said within the past couple of years. I can pull up classic Carnac and Art Fern's Tea Time Movie and laugh so hard I'm nearly crying. I would think some of the skits Carson did in the '70s and '80s would be 'canceled' now in today's social media environment. And the same with David Letterman's Late Night show.
 
crainbebo said:
Boy, not a surprise! However, I wonder if they will pull a Kimmel and start doing guest hosts on one of those nights?
Click to expand...
Did you read the article? Because I think the answer is clear.

EDIT: Nevermind, I think I misunderstood. You were asking if Fallon would do 3 or 4 shows a week?
 
TheBigA said:
They will air repeats on Fridays. Why? Because linear TV is losing audience, and Friday nights are low viewership nights.
Click to expand...
Ever since TGIF went defunct Friday nights lost a lot of viewership. The networks would rather give that time to the affiliates than having it be even more low rated than ever
 
Loganfly said:
Ever since TGIF went defunct Friday nights lost a lot of viewership. The networks would rather give that time to the affiliates than having it be even more low rated than ever
Click to expand...

Why would affiliates want a low rated night back? Local stations are in just as much trouble as networks. They need the programming so they don't have to fill the time.
 
TheBigA said:
Correct. But for a different reason. Johnny didn't want to work 5 nights. Neither did Letterman. Dave would often tape an extra show during the week so he could have Fridays off (and go to Montana). But it was an original show. Carson brought in a guest host.
Click to expand...
Re: Letterman. In the early years of "Late Night" on NBC, it was bumped on Friday nights for "Friday Night Videos" (from July 1983-June 1987). Then Monday night was also the rerun night on "Late Night" during the rest of Dave's NBC run.

But when he went to CBS, there seemed to be very few rerun nights and new shows 5 days a week, at least early in the run (when I watched the show more frequently).

On the "Tonight Show" it always seemed like Monday was either the "Best of Carson" or Joan Rivers (or another guest) night (until she left TTS in 1986 for her own show). In the late 80s/early 90s, TTS was "Best of Carson" on Mondays, Jay Leno on Tuesdays, then Johnny's new episodes the rest of the week. IIRC even some TV listings (maybe even TVG itself) referred to Johnny's rerun nights as "Best of Carson" rather than "The Tonight Show."
 
TheBigA said:
You think streaming is only hurting radio? You think cutbacks are only happening in radio? Look again.
Click to expand...
"But 'radio' is not a monolith! There's no 'radio' guiding everything! Radio is a collection of many stations, not a single thing!"

Someone on this board said something like that to me whenever I suggested that the radio business as a whole has failed to respond effectively to the challenges presented by streaming, and is doing just fine, thank you very much.

But anyway, I'm not surprised. Fallon never really filled the shoes of his predecessors, nor did he rise to the level of "screw you guys, I'm making my own show" like Letterman or Conan, and didn't reinvent/deconstruct the genre like Craig Ferguson. In order for "late night" to compete, it has to move beyond the formula of "host delivers monologue, does a bit or two, then sits down with celebrities promoting their new movie/show" formula.
 
TheBigA said:
This is an interesting move. NBC is cutting The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon to four nights a week:

variety.com

NBC Pulls Back ‘Tonight Show’ to Four Nights Per Week

NBC will pull 'Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" to four nights a week as TV networks look to shore up declines in late-night economics
variety.com variety.com

They will air repeats on Fridays. Why? Because linear TV is losing audience, and Friday nights are low viewership nights.

You think streaming is only hurting radio? You think cutbacks are only happening in radio? Look again.
Click to expand...
Stephen Colbert has been doing this for some time. He also seems to take off a week about every three.
 
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