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Last night, America's late night talk show hosts went to back to work. Letterman and the Scottish Guy had their writing staff, as Letterman's production company worked out a deal with the WGA. Leno and Conan, stuck with the less liberal negatiators of NBC, were unable to work out a deal and went on writer-less. Conan filled the time with close-ups of his strike beard and a thrilling segment in which he spun his wedding ring on his desk for 36 seconds. Leno, though, delivered a monologue that was more or less indistinguishable in its bland hackiness from any other Tonight Show monologue of the last dozen years. Because, as he admitted part-way through, he wrote it himself. In advance. In specific violation of WGA rules! (Leno—like Letterman, like Conan, and unlike Kimmel Carson Daly [whoops]—is a WGA member.) We caught this when we flipped over to Leno for a sec during Letterman's punchier, Made In America By Union Labor monologue, and Nikki Finke confirms its odd interpretation of WGA guidelines. [Deadline Hollywood Daily] More »
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Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, both members of the striking Writers Guild, will go back on the air January 7. In a statement yesterday, Comedy Central said they were still hoping for a "swift resolution to the current stalemate that will enable the shows to be complete again." The implication is that Stewart and Colbert are reluctant to go back to work—so why the hell are they? Other late-night hosts like David Letterman, Jimmy Kimmel and Carson Daly (okay, in his case, "late-night host"), are also heading back to the airwaves. [NYTimes] More »
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Matt Elzweig, the New York Press reporter who recently took Deborah Solomon to task for unsavory journalistic methods, placed a fake ad on Craigslist in which he posed as a network executive seeking non-WGA humor writers to work on a weekly series during the strike. The Press rationalized the experiment, which received more than 80 responses, by agreeing amongst themselves that the ad "reeked of bogus intent." "We wanted to meet the scabs," Elzweig explains. Ha! That's exactly the same logic vice squad cops use right before their cases are dismissed. "We wanted to meet the scabs!" More »
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Now that the studios and networks have an official start date for the strike, executives looking to beat the scab-staffing rush can get a jump-start on their creative needs by hitting Craigslist, online home to the town's most eager, brightest nonunion talent: Scab for Hire Email me Monday when you're employees walk out. I have a degree in Journalism and Philosophy. I work super cheap as my experience is low. I'll write/re-write anything, for art's sake or money's. [Craigslist] More »
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Perhaps realizing that local supermodel hopefuls like the ones who've previously supplemented the WGA's organizing efforts will be far too busy taking jobs on the 25 model-search-related shows the networks will rush into production in the event of a writers' strike to once again work the picket line, the Guild will no longer pursue jurisdiction over reality TV programming when negotiations resume on Thursday, according to a report in Variety. Emboldened by this concession, the studios will attempt to shake the Guild's resolve by unveiling a PowerPoint presentation demonstrating the ready availability of cheap, nonunion labor they can employ during a walkout, centered around the video samples posted to the promotional website of their first post-strike hire, Alex Perez: More »
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