NBC is hoping it can use television’s top-rated program to give late-night host Jimmy Fallon a little jolt this fall.
The Peacock network announced Thursday that The Tonight Show will have four special airings on Sunday nights during the first three months of the football season. The program, which typically airs at 11:35 ET on weeknights, will follow Sunday Night Football and NBC affiliates’ evening local newscasts.
Making it clear that they are hoping Fallon can take advantage of the massive audience the network pulls in for the NFL, two of the scheduled broadcasts will follow games featuring the Kansas City Chiefs – the league’s most popular franchise, thanks largely to its recent run of Super Bowl wins and tight end Travis Kelce’s engagement to pop megastar Taylor Swift.
“We’re hoping to pick up some of those eyeballs for our show,” NBC’s executive vice president of late-night programming Katie Hockmeyer said.
Besides banking on an influx of Swifites who tuned in to the games in hopes of catching a glimpse of the “Bad Blood” singer, the other two games that Fallon will have as lead-ins are also likely to pull in big audiences.
The Oct. 26 episode will air after the Green Bay Packers play the Pittsburgh Steelers, which could feature former Packers superstar Aaron Rodgers facing off against his old team. Additionally, the Nov. 16 telecast will follow a game between the Detroit Lions and defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles.
The Chiefs will play the New York Giants on Sept. 21 and the Houston Texans on Dec. 7.
NBC has already attempted this ratings-boosting experiment with Fallon. Last year, The Tonight Show aired one episode after a Sunday Night Football broadcast – and scored its best viewership of the season.
Of course, the attempt to bolster The Tonight Show’s ratings by pairing it with Sunday Night Football comes as linear television continues to lose viewers in a post-streaming era. Football is one of the few properties that has defied cord-cutting, with NBC’s Sunday evening broadcasts still averaging over 20 million viewers a game. In fact, SNF has been TV’s top-rated program for 14 consecutive years.
“Teaming up with NBC Sports for these Sunday night episodes is always a highlight for us,” Tonight Show showrunner Chris Miller said. “We’ve always loved leaning into sports and are excited to be a part of Sunday Night Football again this season.”
Late-night television has especially been hurt by the steady erosion of broadcast viewership. CBS insisted that its decision to cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert – the top-rated late-night show on television – was due to “purely financial” reasons because the program was losing $40 million annually amid plunging ad revenues and high production costs.
At the same time, the cancellation of the outspoken Trump critic’s show came just days before the Trump administration approved the merger of CBS’s parent company Paramount, prompting accusations that Paramount was trying to curry favor with the president to secure the $8.4 billion deal. While the company has denied this, House Democrats are currently investigating the circumstances surrounding the politically fraught merger.
Meanwhile, The Tonight Show has seen a long and steady decline in its ratings since Fallon debuted to much fanfare in 2014. In the second quarter of this year, the show was mired in third place and averaged just 1.188 million viewers a night, well behind ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! (1.772 million) and Colbert (2.417 million).
Still, while CBS is giving up on its late-night franchise, NBC has made long-term commitments to both Fallon and Seth Meyers, whose show follows The Tonight Show. Both hosts are locked up through 2028.
Additionally, with Colbert wrapping up his program in May, Fallon could see an opportunity to gain more viewers who are still accustomed to scouring the airwaves late at night for chatfests with comics.
However, one wonders how Colbert’s liberal-skewing audience would feel about Fallon following his sitdown with Trump-loving Fox News star Greg Gutfeld earlier this month, which saw the Tonight Show host criticized for the softball approach he took.
At the same time, though, leaning further to the right with his guest list could potentially improve Fallon’s ratings. The Gutfeld episode – which saw Fallon steer clear of politics – scored 1.7 million viewers, representing the show’s highest viewership in nearly two years.
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