Kimmel, Colbert & More: Why Late-Night TV Chaos Is Worrying the Music Business

For 5 days, vocalist Piya Malik believed her dance-pop trio Say She She was 1 of the last bands to execute connected Jimmy Kimmel Live! So she was “elated” erstwhile Walt Disney-owned ABC, successful a reversal Monday (Sept. 22), announced it would reconstruct the long-running amusement to the air. “It’s a tiny triumph that we each needed close now,” says Malik, whose late-night debut was Sept. 10, a week earlier ABC suspended Kimmel and his show. “When we enactment together, we tin support escaped look and clasp these monopolies to account.”

Jimmy Kimmel Live! won’t instrumentality to afloat TV spot tonight: Nexstar, which operates 32 ABC affiliates, and Sinclair, which controls different 38 ABC stations, volition broadcast quality shows instead. And for artists who trust connected late-night shows for promotional power, the whiplash of losing, past regaining, Kimmel speaks to the fragility of the medium. “There are less platforms connected TV that substance and that tin determination the needle,” says seasoned grounds exec Steve Greenberg, manager of AJR, a popular trio that performed connected Kimmel in July. “The fewer that beryllium are truly important, and it’d beryllium a shame to suffer any.”

The astir contiguous crushed for this fragility is that immoderate late-night stars, namely Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and Seth Myers, are fiercely captious of the Trump Administration — and the president and immoderate U.S. officials person responded by threatening to cancel them from the airwaves. The Kimmel brouhaha began erstwhile FCC president Brendan Carr criticized the big past week for his remarks astir slain right-wing activistic Charlie Kirk. “We tin bash this the casual mode oregon the hard way,” Carr said. Shortly afterwards, Walt Disney, which owns ABC, pulled Kimmel’s amusement from production. It was an echo of CBS’s determination successful July, erstwhile it announced The Late Show with Stephen Colbert would beryllium canceled successful May 2026, a determination improbable to beryllium reversed.

But late-night speech shows are successful occupation for reasons beyond politics: After CBS’s Colbert announcement, The Wall Street Journal reported the amusement loses $40 cardinal annually, and TV advertisement spending for the ABC, CBS and NBC late-night shows declined from $439 cardinal successful 2018 to $221 cardinal past year. And portion each bid has a monolithic societal media following, star-making events similar Future Islands performing connected a azygous late-night show, Late Show with David Letterman, successful 2014 are uncommon successful today’s TV landscape. Earlier this year, Elton John and Brandi Carlile’s medium Who Believes In Angels? debuted astatine No. 9 connected the Billboard 200 lone aft the duo made the rounds to respective greeting and late-night shows. “People are not watching tv astatine the complaint radical are watching YouTube, Instagram and TikTok,” says Adrian L. Miller, an creator manager who is moving with vocalist Charlie Bereal and statement Death Row Records. “Discovery starts connected your telephone now.”

Last year, a Chartmetric investigation of 458 creator appearances connected salient TV shows, from Kimmel and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to Ellen and Saturday Night Live, showed that featured artists’ monthly Spotify streams accrued conscionable 1.78% aft their respective performances. A fewer salient ones, similar Bartees Strange connected Kimmel in 2022, prompted greater increases, but 192 artists’ streaming enactment really decreased afterwards.

For Ken Casey — frontman of Dropkick Murphys and an outspoken Trump professional who calls the president “a small crybaby who can’t instrumentality immoderate criticism, truthful helium has to get the shows canceled” — the Kimmel issue is astir the aboriginal of the First Amendment and thing else. “It’s hard for maine to adjacent deliberation astir what’s mislaid for a band’s opportunities to execute — that seems truthful minuscule compared to the larger contented astatine hand, which is escaped speech.” But Casey, whose set appeared connected Kimmel in 2004, acknowledges the dwindling speech amusement level for musicians. “Yes, those opportunities person go less and farther between, adjacent earlier politics,” helium says. “Now they’re adjacent fewer. I consciousness similar euphony ever finds a way. The connection ever finds a way.”

If late-night speech shows are heading for extinction — whether for the disturbing crushed of presidents pressuring networks to unopen disconnected contrary voices, oregon the much mundane crushed of audiences and advertizing dollars drifting to streaming and societal media — artists volition suffer much than performances earlier ample TV audiences. Late-night shows person a past of taking chances connected caller artists, breaking once-unknown bands similar Phoenix connected Satur...