I Notice There is Still No Jon or Stephen

It appears that late night TV is going to get slightly less shitty…First a little history lesson.

In 1988, two months into a WGA strike that had shut down Hollywood, Johnny Carson reluctantly resumed his hosting duties on The Tonight Show without writers. Letterman soon followed. Both Carson and Letterman spent a lot of time “winging it”, trying to fill time and keep their respective shows going. To give you an example; Carson at one point filled time by viewing snapshots brought in by Tonight Show announcer Ed McMahon. Letterman on the other hand would look into the camera and simply state how much time was left till the end of the show.

Fast forward to the current WGA strike. It was announced on Monday that Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien (hopefully sans the creepy beard) are going to be following in Carson’s footsteps and will return to hosting the shows, without writers, on January 2^nd.

All the late night (and late late night) talk shows have been in re-runs since the beginning of the strike on Nov. 5^th (except for Carson Daly who is not WGA and could not risk missing an extended period of time and getting canceled altogether). Both Leno and Conan have decided to cross the picket lines so that their 180+ non-writing staff doesn’t get fired. On Tuesday Jimmy Kimmel announced he would also be returning on Jan. 2^nd minus his writers.

These two announcements came on the tails of the announcement (there has been a lot of announcing) that David Letterman’s production company World Wide Pants, which independently produces The Late Show with David Letterman & The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, is independently negotiating with the WGA to allow both shows to come back with FULL writing staffs. World Wide Pants is negotiation outside of CBS which makes it more likely that the WGA is willing to grant them the necessary waivers. Both shows could return by Jan. 9^th, if not sooner.

CBS has tried to distance itself from the World Wide Pants in order to remain aligned with the other big studios. It seems crazy that none of the big corporations are willing to get a leg up on the competition by going against the grain of the “old boys club”, and negotiating independently with the WGA. They are all willing to sacrifice during this strike for the sake of solidarity. We shall see how this shakes out for them in the end (although with more money than God, I am sure they will be just fine).

Sadly The Daily Show and The Colbert Report will remain in re-runs. That’s still infinitely better than watching Leno without writers (just thinking about it makes me want to dip my eyes in Kerosene, light them on fire, stomp them out with a poo covered shoe, and bury them).