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And then there was Fallon.
NBC’s “Tonight Show” is the only late-night program to keep on keeping on as usual as the nation moves into late summer, a sign of how the wee-hours format continues to be winnowed down amid
a continuing decline in the economics of midnight TV.
NBC this week launched what is expected to be a seven-week hiatus for Seth Meyers’ “Late Night,” the longest break of its kind since the host took over the show in 2014, according to people familiar with the matter. The LateNighter web site previously reported the new interruption. Social feeds belonging to “Late Night” on Monday told followers “See you in the fall!” and offered a link to reserve tickets to see the program live. Comedy Central’s “Daily Show” has also gone on a summer hiatus, and will be off for five weeks before returning in September. The network will not show repeats, and will instead feature other programming.
These moves leave Jimmy Fallon as the only regular late-night host continuing to show up to make new programming over the next few weeks. In some ways, the scene is a throwback to the days when Johnny Carson hosted the show before some media companies enlisted Arsenio Hall or Joan Rivers to try and knock him off his wee-hours throne. Jimmy Kimmel is on summer vacation, and his ABC program has relied on guest hosts. Tonight, the show features a repeat of a previous guest’s stint. Stephen Colbert is in exile, and CBS is no longer competing in late night, though it has leased two hours in the time slot to entrepreneur Byron Allen.
Late-night TV is in something of a retrenchment mode, with the rise of streaming luring away viewers who in the past made sure to tune in to their favorite host holding forth after the end of the late local news. Ad spending on late-night television shows fell to $209 million in 2025, according to data from Guideline, a tracker of ad spending, down from $519.7 million in 2017 — a drop-off of nearly 60%.
And talent contracts for many late-night hosts are getting shorter. Kimmel recently signed a surprising one-year deal with Disney that will keep him on his after-hours roost though 2027. John Oliver just agreed to a one-year extension with Warner Bros. Discovery’s HBO. Jon Stewart’s deal to host and produce “The Daily Show” has been negotiated in one-year extensionssince he returned to the program in 2024.
Both Fallon and Meyers have longer-term guarantees — at least for now. Their deals won’t expire until 2028.
