As Late-Night TV Opportunities Dwindle For Artists, the Industry Feels the Squeeze

On Jan. 5, the day bluegrass star Molly Tuttle performed “That’s Gonna Leave a Mark” on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, news broke that the long-running ABC late-night talk show would soon reduce its number of weekly musical acts to two. Tuttle’s name and image appeared in several news stories about the change — good press despite the bad news. “I’ll take the windfall,” says Kevin Spellman, her manager. “Unfortunately, what we have is a significant limitation on opportunities to expose your music to a national audience, particularly in the smaller genres.”

Kimmel’s music reduction, along with Late Night With Seth Meyers cutting its Fred Armisen-founded house band in 2024, and CBS’ cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert kicking in this May, means The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Saturday Night Live! are the only major late-night shows continuing to emphasize live music. It’s a cultural shift away from the all-powerful TV era when an appearance on Johnny Carson’s or David Letterman’s shows could single-handedly break new stars, and it leaves the music industry flailing for big-swing promotional appearances.

“It’s just making it harder and harder for us to find outlets outside of social media and radio to really reach a lot of people,” says Brian Schwartz, manager of Dawes, which memorably covered the Beatles‘ “With a Little Help From My Friends” on Kimmel with guests Aloe Blacc and others in December, to promote their benefit show for Southern California fire victims. “Late-night television, and TV in general, has become harder and harder. To take three nights away from us on yet another show, it’s difficult.”

Reps for Jimmy Kimmel Live! did not respond to inquiries, but the show’s change in music over the last year reflects the diminishing power of late-night talk shows for artists — especially their initial airings on television. In the 2000s, Letterman and his top rival, Jay Leno, frequently drew between 4 million and 6 million TV viewers nightly, while their successors averaged between 1.2 million and 2.5 million throughout 2025.

For artists, managers and labels, the dwindling promotional opportunities has meant tougher decisions: Most talk shows do not pay for performances, and artists frequently must cover travel expenses as well as luxuries like makeup and wardrobe. Sources told Billboard in 2024 that such expenses can range from $150,000 to $225,000, or as high as $700,000 for Saturday Night Live!. “They have, like, 2 million viewers of these shows, and that’s what we get on daily posts on TikTok,” Ethan Curtis, manager of singer-songwriter JVKE, who played Fallon in 2022, said at the time. “It’s an energy drain. We travel and train for the performance and do it in one take. It doesn’t feel worth it for every song.”

Traditionally, labels have paid for the performances, which, when they go well, can significantly boost music sales and streaming — not to mention draw attention to upcoming tour dates. (They frequently take the costs out of the artists’ own budgets, to be paid back after artists recoup their advance payments, according to standard record deals.) Some labels, says a source who used to work on music in late-night television, have recently insisted that the talk shows themselves cover these expenses — which may be one reason the shows are cutting back. “I imagine they’re being much more careful,” the source says. “Someone that could have a song on the Hot 100 isn’t as attractive to bookers. Maybe they’re only looking at the Top 10.”

“They’re cutting back because some of the monologues are getting longer, or you have multiple guests and there’s movie studios who put these actors on media campaigns to sell movies. They’re pushing for ‘You want one of our top stars? I want to get two segments,’” Spellman adds. “I get it. There’s a lot of money invested in these promotions.”

For artists who’ve booked performances recently on top late-night shows, the payoff is still worth it. Dawes and Friends’ Kimmel performance has landed more than 66,000 YouTube views, and Tuttle’s Kimmel appearance earlier this month drew nearly 50,000 YouTube views, plus 4,500 likes on Instagram — not to mention what Spellman calls “cut-downs,” or snippets and excerpts posted not only by fans but media reports, including those about Kimmel‘s music reduction. Referring to ABC briefly yanking Kimmel’s show due to political pressure last September, Spellman says, “Since Kimmel came back, his audience is significantly higher. It’s hard to measure exactly the impact on eyeballs and views on social platforms, but it is incredibly significant. That’s the part that is a bummer, that we’re going to miss out on.”

Career-making late-night TV performances have been rare in recent years, compared to, say, Phoenix‘s 2009 SNL appearance that turned its album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix into a smash. But they still happen: In late 2023, Kimmel aired R&B singer October London‘s performance of “Back to Your Place,” complete with a Snoop Dogg introduction and a pricey seven-piece band. The clip landed some 300,000 YouTube views — and enough buzz to increase ticket sales for London’s show at Brooklyn Steel later that night by 100. “It’s not nothing,” Adrian L. Miller, then London’s manager, later told Billboard.

The Kimmel music reduction, as well as the loss of music on Meyers and the impending cancellation of Colbert, is a “blow to everybody — the artists, the labels, the teams, the show,” Schwartz says. “It’s just another kick in the marketing shins, so to speak.”