Late Night With Seth Meyers Dropping House Band Amid Budget Cuts
The Late Night studio just got a little emptier.
Late Night With Seth Meyers‘ house musicians, known as The 8G Band, will not return in person when the NBC series comes back for Season 12 in September, according to a report from Vulture.
Keyboardist Eli Janney — who makes up the band with lead guitarist Seth Jabour, bassist Syd Butler and, occasionally, drummer Fred Armisen — said the show’s upcoming “revamp” stemmed from budget cuts at NBC. Per Janney, Meyers and Late Night showrunner Mike Shoemaker told the band earlier this spring about the cut, while Season 11 of the show is still airing.
“They expressed their regret and frustration about it,” Janney said. “They had been trying to work it out for months, but in the end NBC was adamant about where they wanted the budget to go. It’s not just the band; there’s a whole crew that works with the band, so there’s a lot of people employed. I think this was an easy way for them to cut the budget. ‘Easy’ is not the right word. There’s a lot of strong emotions. No one is happy about it.”
NBC did not immediately respond to TVLine’s request for comment.
Janney added that although he doesn’t yet know how Late Night will address the band’s departure at the end of Season 11, The 8G Band won’t be entirely gone from the series come fall. Rather, “we’re still going to make” walk-on music for Meyers and his guests, “but we just won’t be playing it live. So that will continue. That’s one nice thing they’ve worked out.”
The 8G Band’s exit, though, does bring the end of a live music era for the Late Night franchise, which Janney also acknowledged. David Letterman was previously accompanied in-house by Paul Shaffer and the World’s Most Dangerous Band; Conan O’Brien by The Max Weinberg 7; and Jimmy Fallon by The Roots, who have since followed him to The Tonight Show.
“It’s also just a sad day for Late Night, because it’s been going for over 40 years now,” Janney continued. “But, sadly, it’s the reality of broadcast and a shrinking market — streaming eating into this, and YouTube eating into that. Streaming is not making money, either. So budgets everywhere have been cut and cut and cut. I liken it to a Spotify moment in music, where suddenly it’s like, ‘Nobody wants to pay for music.’ Music gets devalued.”
Late Night viewers, will you miss The 8G Band? Tell us in a comment below.
I feel bad saying this but in the 40 years if Late Night, this was the most inconsequential band. Dave, Conan, and Jimmy all found fun ways to incorporate the band, making them feel essential. I do not feel the 8G band is essential to seth myers. Fred Amisten was a neat idea on paper, but he’s barely there. Its sad that there even needs to be budget cuts… Seth Myers show, after 10 seasons, should not have to make budget cuts and unearths perhaps some deeper problems.
I don’t watch the show regularly but beyond the intro music and closing music, I don’t notice it. The reality is, everything the band does can be prerecorded and reused and save lots of money.
I hate this. I hope they make that outro theme song available for purchase and download one day, an absolutely lovely piece of music to hear as you drift to sleep.
I agree. I don’t play the outro on Jimmy (nothing against the Roots, I enjoy them the rest of the episode!), but I always let it play on Seth. This is really a shame.
I will greatly miss the 8G band. It was awesome when they’d bring in guest drummers as well.
Hate to hear anyone lose their job due to cutbacks. Dealing with that myself right now.
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However, if Seth’s looking for an inexpensive alternative, I hear Alfredo Sauce and the Shy Fellas have been looking for steady work since Craig Ferguson left late night in 2014… #iykyk
That is incorrect. People don’t mind paying for good content but the issue is they want us to watch ads and to pay for stuff we don’t care about. One of the perks of streaming is each thing could be separate and now it’s being bundled again. I can’t get excited to hear some athletic or actor is getting a huge payday then find out the app I got will have that content and now my bill goes up. They need to scale everything then as most of us dump these paid things as they dont have enough. Networks had 22 to 35 episodes now they want us to take 5-10 episode seasons and less and less shows. Also why can we use antennas but nope can’t watch free in the app. Want to give your advertisers viewers will make it eaiser. They have been playing games for years and dropped so many balls and alienated too many that many just don’t care so yes it looks like the whole system is collapsing and hopefully they’ll right the ship or it it will sink and some new better ones will come along who can focus on what people want again. I went from 80 hours of tv a week to free streamers now cause it’s so bad. I just buy the few things left I like and all but one are ending this season
I see Bidenomics working out for ya Seth.
Gee, I didn’t realize that President Biden was also the President of NBC and Programming Director, as well. Gee, you learn something new every day!
Not really. They are not as good as Colbert’s band.
I tape Seth and watch it at 5 AM with my first couple cups of coffee . Love the band and the guest drummer gig and the whole thing .. such a bummer without the G-8. Another piece of magic gone from my day . 😓