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As CBS’ Late Show With Stephen Colbert nears the end of its run, another late-night host will give a nod to the show — by staying off the air.
In “a sign of late-night solidarity,” a NBC put it, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon will air a repeat on Thursday, May 21, opposite the final episode of The Late Show. ABC said on Monday that Jimmy Kimmel Live! will also go dark that night.
The announcement comes a day after Fallon, Kimmel, Seth Meyers and John Oliver were all guests on The Late Show, discussing the end of Colbert’s tenure (and of The Late Show as a whole). They also announced they’ll release a new episode of their Strike Force Five podcast on Wednesday.
“Late night is one of those things that’s been around our whole lives where it kind of it’s just part of our lives,” Fallon said on the show. “I never thought it was a job when I was growing up. I just thought Johnny Carson came with the television set. People wanna go to sleep, have a good laugh and go to bed happy.”
While the current group of late-night hosts are all competitors, they are not bitter rivals in the way that, say, David Letterman and Jay Leno were in the 1990s. Fallon also appeared on The Late Show in March, singing Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” with some altered lyrics befitting Colbert’s impending departure.
The Tonight Show normally airs repeats on Friday nights, but with the show dark on May 21, it will mount a new episode on May 22 with guests Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal, and musical guest Maluma. May 22, incidentally, is also when CBS debuts Byron Allen’s Comics Unleashed in the 11:35 p.m. spot; Allen’s company is buying the airtime from the network and will sell ads against it.
