NEW YORK – CBS’ decision to end “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” earlier this year did more than remove a marquee name from late-night television. It also erased one of the format’s most reliable music stages, dealing another setback to artists already facing a shrinking number of national TV opportunities.
For generations, late-night television has offered musicians a rare bridge to new listeners, from The Beatles’ culture-shifting appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” to Chappell Roan’s breakout turn on “The Late Show.” But that pipeline has narrowed sharply. After James Corden exited CBS’ “The Late Late Show” in 2023, the program — and its prized performance slot — was not replaced. NBC’s “Late Night With Seth Meyers” has scaled back live music, while ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” now features performances only twice a week. At the moment, NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” is the only late-night program that continues to book live musical acts on a consistent basis.
For emerging musicians, the value of those appearances remains hard to overstate. Many are now looking to new digital shows and online performance platforms as possible successors to a TV tradition that once helped turn unknown acts into national names.
How late-night TV could change an artist’s career overnight
For Future Islands, that kind of lightning struck on March 3, 2014. The synth-pop band had long been a fixture in America’s underground music circuit, powered in large part by frontman Samuel T. Herring’s magnetic stage presence and singular voice — a gravelly, theatrical instrument that seemed to sit somewhere between Tom Waits and Rammstein’s Till Lindemann. Then came their performance on “Late Show with David Letterman.” Letterman was visibly captivated. “I’ll take all of that you got!” he exclaimed, and the fiercely independent band suddenly found itself in the middle of a viral moment.
“At the time that we played Letterman, we were in a transitory period for the band,” bassist William Cashion said. Future Islands had recently signed with the larger indie label 4AD Records, brought on management and been told a late-night booking might happen — though the members doubted it would actually come together. “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. These things don’t really do what they used to,’” Cashion recalled.
The prediction proved wrong.
“All the festivals that initially turned us down all of a sudden wanted us to come play. Everything kind of shifted after that moment,” he said. “It was definitely a huge turning point and gave the band much greater exposure.”
New media offers an alternative place for discovery
A dearth of late-night spots particularly affects independent acts — the kind that could really benefit from the exposure, just like Future Islands. Representatives for CBS, NBC and ABC did not return The Associated Press’ requests for comment.
Chloë Walsh, co-founder of publicity firm The Oriel, points to the music bookers behind the scenes. “Of course, they have to book all the biggest things in the world, but they also have things that they want to champion,” she says. Fewer slots means developing artists are competing with big names for dwindling opportunities.
But there are other avenues to discovery.
“We’re kind of an anomaly in the way that our song and that performance took off,” says Cashion. “But we’ve seen other bands have TikTok viral hits and stuff like that.”
There are many examples of artists cracking the code online: Singer-songwriter Gigi Perez’s career was launched with the TikTok smash “Sailor Song,” as was Malcolm Todd’s with a few viral hits, landing him a major label deal with Columbia Records. Indie band Beach Bunny saw their punky-pop go viral with “Prom Queen” just ahead of the pandemic, leading to performances on Kimmel and Fallon.
Even legacy artists are experiencing second winds of music discovery: Weezer’s 2010s power-pop track “Go Away,” featuring Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino, recently made the rounds on TikTok and became a top song for both on Spotify.
“It seems like a lot of different aspects of the album cycle have kind of been replaced with short-form content,” Beach Bunny singer Lili Trifilio explained. “And it is a bummer because late-night is a service to musicians in such a major way. You are helping people reach new fans.”
“And I think now a lot of the responsibility of advertising is falling on the artists to be their own late-night special on TikTok or whatever,” she continued. “I don’t think that these 30-second, one-minute self-made clips hold the same value.”
Internet creators reimagine traditional formats
“The media landscape is always changing. Sometimes that’s good for music and sometimes it’s bad for music,” says Walsh. “There’s a whole breed of young creators at the moment doing really interesting stuff. … Hopefully there will be more opportunities out there and we don’t have to rely on the networks.”
She points to “Track Star(asterisk),” the online music trivia series, which has begun hosting live performances, and to Julian Shapiro-Barnum of “Recess Therapy,” who has launched a late-night YouTube show, “Outside Tonight,” that features live performances.
Shapiro-Barnum says “Outside Tonight” was born out of necessity. “We know that the entertainment industry is hard to break into. And so, what’s been so cool about digital media is that it’s circumvented that,” he says.
“How can we do late night, but different?” was his approach. The show takes place outdoors, bypassing a traditional studio. The musical bookings also lean independent. Recent performers include rapper Erick the Architect, indie rock soloist Annie DiRusso and the multi-instrumentalist and experimentalist L’Rain.
“There was no version of the show that didn’t have music,” he says. “To me, it feels like a staple.”
Beach Bunny performed during the first “Outside Tonight” episode.
“It’s so cool to see people that are like movers and makers be like, ‘Hey, this is a gap I’m seeing. Late-night is being placed on the back burner. We need to revive this; I’m gonna figure it out,’” Trifilio said. “I hope that it inspires other people to step up.”
She sees it as part of a larger YouTube renaissance, shifting away from prioritizing short-form content.
“I think that people are yearning for some longer-format stuff,” she says.
The power for live performance is exposure — not sales
In traditional late-night TV spots, artists benefit from exposure — but that doesn’t necessarily mean a jump in sales. Ideally, that will also translate to these new media spaces.
“It’s a showcase for touring. And that’s really where artists make their money,” says Walsh. “People say, ‘It doesn’t really give you a bump if you’re on a late-night TV show.’ They’re looking at the sales, they’re not looking at a promoter in Minneapolis going, ‘Oh my god, I want that,’ or a radio playlist director saying, ‘Oh that was fantastic, we should add that.’”
“Every musical guest who’s come on ‘Outside Tonight,’ everyone in the crew, everyone in the audience, has not stopped listening,” says Shapiro-Barnum. “In real time, it spreads and creates all these fans. So, I have to imagine that happens online as well.”
But for many, landing a late-night TV performance is still the north star of a press run.
“For a lot of people — especially international artists that are coming to slog it out across the U.S. in some club shows they may not even be headlining — if you could get on ‘Jimmy Kimmel,’ it’s like we’ve cracked it,” says Walsh. “The whole thing was worth it. And that’s huge.”
