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As Late Night Returns, Who Will Stand with the Writers?
I have my first post up on FireDogLake, where I’ll be writing about the ongoing WGA strike. -MW
After seven weeks of silence, late night talk hosts return to the air tonight – but without their writers, who promise to picket outside the shows until the strike is resolved. While David Letterman negotiated a deal for writers to return to his and Craig Ferguson’s shows, Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert must improvise monologues and sketches to fill air time without their writers.
Letterman likely took the lead from Johnny Carson’s efforts during the 1988 strike, in which Carson eventually negotiated a deal for his writers to return while the strike continued. While Carson briefly mentioned the strike in his return to the air, he did not use the strike for material for his show, instead filling time with musical performances and skits.
Letterman took a different route in 1988 – one that he will hopefully resurrect tonight.
“The producers happen to be, in my opinion, money-grabbing scum,” he said in one of a number of skewering references to the studios. “I want to make sure people understand I’m in favor of the writers guild.”
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