Shows like Leno, Letterman, Kimmel and even Fallon and Ferguson…why aren’t they aired Sunday through Thursday instead of Monday through Friday?
My reasoning is that I think most people probably watch these on a “work night” - meaning they have to get up for work the next day and perhaps watch all (or in my case, part of the show) in bed until you fall asleep.
Friday nights are, for most people, a night you can/could stay up late to watch a movie or go out with friends or whatever.
Sunday nights - at least on my cable company - is a dearth of programming…a re-run of Castle or Law and Order whatever and pretty much nothing else.
Wouldn’t it make more sense, and getter better ratings, if they aired these late night talk shows Sunday through Thursday?
Well for one thing, the writing and production staff would have to work on Sunday. Also, are you going to be able to get a studio audience on a Sunday?
I remember at one time Late Night With David Letterman was only on Monday through Thursday, and the network (NBC) would run something else, like Friday Night Videos, in its place on Fridays.
I also seem to recall Monday being a fairly typical night for The Tonight Show to be a rerun, back in the Carson days.
It’s been quite a while since I’ve really paid attention to any of those late night shows. Nowadays, is it typical for one night a week to be a “bigger” (or "smaller) show—higher profile guests, more elaborate skits, etc.?
Taping on Friday would work, except they wouldn’t be able to reference the weekend events in the jokes. A big part of the shows’ appeal is how the jokes are about current events.
Going back in history, Sunday was a traditional day of rest in show business. It was a cycle between some churches not wanting people to do entertainment on Sundays rather than reading the Bible and the lower expected audience because people had other ways of recreating. And people had to go to work on Monday mornings, so late night anything was less of a draw. Friday nights were not as big a deal as Saturday nights then either; too many people had to work at least a half day on Saturday. If you had to take a night or two off, then the ones with lowest expected attendance were the best, and those were usually Sunday and Monday.
When television came along, the execs experimented a bit but soon found that Sundays nights were the nights that the family gathered in front of the tv set. That didn’t carry over into the late hours. Those were specifically non-family shows so they didn’t benefit from the larger audience. Remember that even networks did not program 24 hours in the early years. Late-night programming was a throw-away to kill time. As long as some advertisers bought in, a show was run. Remember also that television is never about the viewers: it is always about the advertisers. Advertisers didn’t want to spend money on late-night adult-oriented Sunday evening/Monday morning programs. Even if it worked it didn’t look good.
So the late night shows settled on a normal work week of Monday-Friday. The people putting out the shows liked it, the audience was larger, and the advertisers were happier. Today isn’t much different from the 1950s in that regard. Somebody could take a chance on a Sunday talk show. If it works everybody will be gobsmacked and if it doesn’t a million people will say “I told you so.” The last experiment like that to work was Saturday Night (not yet SNL). It was sheer throwaway. Howard Cosell’s Saturday Night in primetime was supposed to crush it. Somehow - mostly a once in a lifetime confluence of a million talents - it worked; unlike every competitor thrown at it. Nobody in tv is anxious to be another failure.
Plus, with time shifting so popular (like with DVR or online), there’s no real reason to even try to fix what isn’t broken. Those who want your show on at a different time can watch it at a different time. Pretty much anybody who wants to watch Friday’s show on Sunday night is already doing so.
Friday Night Videos/Friday Night/Late Friday came on in place of Later/Last Call, not Late Night. Then Last Call took over the slot to expand to 5 nights.
Also, for a good chunk of Conan’s run (and I think Letterman did this also) Late Night was reruns on Monday, with new shows Tuesday through Friday. Well, the show airs after midnight so technically it was Wed through Sat, but whatever.
And Conan’s TBS show is Monday through Thursday, or at least it was back when it started, I haven’t tuned in lately so maybe it’s changed.
Everything is just inertia from that point on.