NBC cuts ‘Tonight’ back to four original episodes a week

NBC is following the lead of its rivals at CBS and ABC and scaling back production of “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” to four new episodes a week.

The show had, despite “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” dropping original episodes Fridays previously, stuck to its schedule until now.

The show previously produced five new episodes a week. Like many talk shows, Friday’s episode was typically taped on Thursday during a double-header day for the cast and crew.

During the summer monthly, “Tonight” would switch to airing new episodes Monday through Thursday and then a repeat on Fridays (some weeks contained more repeats to accommodate vacation schedules).

NBC now says the summer schedule will remain the norm throughout the year. 

The network will be able to save some money by eliminating one original show each week. This has the potential to not only cut down on the original content and bookings that need to be created for each episode, but also the amount of time needed in the studio to tape episodes, meaning hourly workers could see a reduction in their work hours.

While “Tonight” and other late night shows often rely on current events to inspire content, the fact that Friday episodes were already pre-taped means viewers were already seeing at least one show a week that wouldn’t reference very recent events. 

When drawing from past episodes, NBC could perform light editing or even combine segments from multiple past airings to create episodes that still stand up even after time has passed, though it was not confirmed if those techniques will be used.

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The move comes after NBC also announced it would cut the house band from “Late Night with Seth Meyers” as part of budget cuts. The network has not announced any changes with the “Tonight” band, The Roots.