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I’ve been writing a lot about late night in recent months, what with Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers earning Trump’s ire and The Late Show getting unceremoniously canceled by CBS. However, one thing that came up when I was contemplating Stephen Colbert’s newly open schedule recently had to do with what the hours on late night TV actually entail. Thankfully, Seth Meyers has answered that question for us.
My query started because I wondered what Colbert was doing during his final days on set. Anyone who pays attention to the late night scene should already know that shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live! are a bit of a misnomer. Late night shows are taped, not live, and while they have backgrounds that give the feeling it is evening, they are worked on and taped hours earlier than they appear on our TVs. It’s a bit of bts magic that helps set the scene.
So we know the two Jimmys, Colbert, Seth Meyers and other hosts across the years work during the day, but they don’t always observe 9-5 hours. In fact, Meyers actually illuminated his late night schedule for viewers once, and it does sound like a bit of a grind, albeit a well-paying one.
Running Down How Late Night's Team Works Each Episode
At 8:30 a.m., Seth Meyers shows up at his office to start the day. That’s not as early as some, but it’s certainly a bit earlier than his former SNL cast members are waltzing into 30 Rock for their 9 a.m. pitch meetings on Mondays. By 11 scripts have been cemented and Meyers’ staff heads into his office for walk throughs on certain bits; in the Washington Post rundown of this timeline, they were working on a “Jokes Seth Can’t Tell” segment.
They keep rolling through noon and 2 p.m., and then finally the late night hosts steps up onto the stage for a quick run through with the test audience. The run through at Rockefeller Plaza commences at 4:15 p.m. Jokes are tried out, new jokes are sometimes written on the fly, and Meyers’ team takes a gauge of the temperature of the room after he runs through this initial version of his monologue.
By 5 p.m. the official cue cards are put together for Late Night. Seth Meyers employs Wally Feresten and his cue card team to help out with the show. Wally’s been doing SNL for 27 years and has the whole cue card thing down to a science. If you are wondering why Meyers is still using cue cards, there is a reason.
One big pro, though, to doing Meyers’ show is that SNL really is live. It’s gonna stop and start whether or not the cards are ready or need to be changed on the fly. Late Night’s a little looser and can stop and go, per Feresten.
If we’re running late or we get stuff late, then they can hold the show for five or ten minutes. With SNL you can’t. So we’re used to doing things fast.
It’s 6:15 when curtain call happens and the former SNL star is greeting his guests. Taping ends around 7:30 p.m. (remember some adjustments are able to be made for changes or emergencies). Presumably it’s after that when Seth Meyers goes home.
Sometimes, however, that’s not true of his staff, who must respond to breaking news, and must change jokes and segments for the next day’s show on the fly. In the WP article, Meyers’ writers Sal Gentile and Amber Ruffin, for example, kept working after taping, one at home and one in the writer’s room at 30 Rock.
To be clear, these shows are producing at volume. They usually break for a bit in the summer, on holidays, and a few other times over the year, but on average the 2026 TV schedule had late night shows producing between 150-200 episodes a season over the course of around 40 out of 52 weeks. So, it's certainly a long schedule, there's no question about it, and it's no wonder this was maybe not Colbert's "dream" job when he hesitantly said yes to it.
In the U.K., talk shows like The Graham Norton Show only air once a week. In the U.S., the Late Night writers are grinding it out like this five days a week, and they are responding to whatever is going on in the world in real time. It’s a lot, and while I can’t confirm Late Night with Seth Meyers operates in exactly the same way Stephen Colbert’s show did, the point is, it’s hard work for the large crew of individuals that bring us the tapings over and over again.
