The numbers come first. CBS ended 'The Late Show With Stephen Colbert' earlier this year, shuttering its music programming alongside it. NBC's 'Late Night With Seth Meyers' has cut back on live music. ABC's 'Jimmy Kimmel Live!' reduced performances to twice a week. James Corden left CBS' 'The Late Late Show' in 2023, and that performance space was never revived. As it stands, only NBC's 'The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon' consistently books live performances.
For independent artists, the math is brutal. Fewer slots mean developing acts compete directly with global superstars for dwindling television real estate — and most lose.
A single night can still change everything
The clearest case study remains March 3, 2014. Synth-pop band Future Islands performed on 'Late Show with David Letterman.' Host David Letterman was visibly transfixed, shouting 'I'll take all of that you got!' The DIY band's team had warned them not to expect much. 'Our team, they told us, it'll be good for your fans and your friends and family, but it's not really going to move the needle,' recalled bassist William Cashion.
They were wrong. 'All the festivals that initially turned us down all of a sudden wanted us to come play,' Cashion said. 'It was definitely a huge turning point and gave the band much greater exposure.'
That kind of platform is now scarce. Chloë Walsh, co-founder of publicity firm The Oriel, notes that music bookers still champion emerging talent — but with fewer slots, the math simply doesn't work for most developing artists.
TikTok fills the gap, imperfectly
The industry has watched a parallel ecosystem emerge. Singer-songwriter Gigi Perez broke through with the TikTok hit 'Sailor Song.' Malcolm Todd landed a major label deal with Columbia Records after several viral clips. Indie band Beach Bunny saw 'Prom Queen' go viral just ahead of the pandemic, which eventually led to appearances on Kimmel and Fallon. Even legacy acts are benefiting: Weezer's track 'Go Away,' featuring Best Coast's Bethany Cosentino, recently circulated on TikTok and became a top song for both artists on Spotify.
But Beach Bunny singer Lili Trifilio is candid about the trade-off. 'It seems like a lot of different aspects of the album cycle have kind of been replaced with short-form content,' she said. 'And it is a bummer because late-night is a service to musicians in such a major way.' She added: 'I don't think that these 30-second, one-minute self-made clips hold the same value.'
Walsh points to nascent alternatives — online music trivia series 'Track Star(asterisk)' has begun hosting live performances, and Julian Shapiro-Barnum of 'Recess Therapy' has launched a YouTube late-night show called 'Outside Tonight' that features live performances. Representatives for CBS, NBC and ABC did not return the Associated Press' requests for comment.
The market has already voted
The contraction of late-night music slots is, at its core, a story about what broadcast television is worth in a fragmented attention economy. Networks are cutting costs; the administrative logic of a weekly music booking is harder to justify when viewership migrates to on-demand platforms. The market isn't wrong — it's just reallocating. What's lost in the transition is the curated, high-production moment that gave an unknown band from Baltimore a national audience in a single evening. No algorithm has replicated that yet. Independent artists — the free-enterprise risk-takers of the music industry — are being asked to absorb that cost themselves, one 60-second clip at a time.
