Gawker: scabs

Leno's Self-Penned Monologue Broke Strike Rules

Pareene — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 09:35:34 EST

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]

Late-Night Scabs Fold!

Maggie — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 10:00:28 EST

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]

Scabby TV Writers Outed By Fake Craigslist Ad!

Maggie — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 16:00:36 EST

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!"