‘Tonight Show’ Sets Week of Live Broadcasts, Post-NFL Sunday Airings

Jimmy Fallon is putting in some overtime at the start of the 2019-20 TV season.

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon will air five Sunday shows in the fall after NBC’s Sunday Night Football broadcast. Fallon will also do a full week of live shows beginning Sept. 23, coinciding with the start of the primetime TV season.

The first (pre-taped) Sunday show will air after SNF‘s first game of the season (and late local news) on Sept. 8, with guests Jamie Foxx, Michael B. Jordan, Kelly Clarkson and singer Kane Brown. Additional Sunday shows are set for Oct. 6, 20 and 27 and Dec. 1. They will likely start after midnight ET, as Sunday Night Football tends to run until 11:30 p.m. or later most weeks.

The live Tonight Show broadcasts will run from Sept. 23-27, during the first week of the Nielsen-measured season. Fallon has previously hosted live shows following the Democratic presidential debates in late June and the past two times NBC has aired the Super Bowl. 

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The extra Sunday telecasts and the week of live shows arrive as The Tonight Show is coming off a season where it surrendered the late-night ratings crown to CBS’ The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. The latter led in the adults 18-49 demographic in 2018-19 for the first time since Colbert joined CBS in 2015, drawing 677,000 nightly viewers in the demo to 659,000 for The Tonight Show (a margin that has largely held up during the summer months).

The Tonight Show trailed The Late Show by 1.37 million viewers in 2018-19, vs. 1.2 million viewers the previous season.

Along with the Tonight Show stunts, NBC will also launch A Little Late With Lilly Singh on Sept. 16. The YouTube star’s 1:35 a.m. show replaces Last Call With Carson Daly.

NBC also released a promo for Fallon’s post-Sunday Night Football shows. Watch it below.