Writers get last laugh on late-night shows
Television’s late-night impresarios burst back on the air Wednesday after a forced two-month hiatus, expressing support for the striking writers even though several of the hosts crossed the picket line to resume their shows.
“I’m on the side of the writers,” declared Jay Leno on NBC’s “The Tonight Show” in an opening monologue punctuated by swipes at the networks over their handling of the writers strike, now in its ninth week.
Leno said he returned to the airwaves for the first time since Nov. 2 to keep his nonwriting staff -- whose salaries he helped pay in December -- from getting laid off. “We had to come back because we have essentially 19 people putting 160 people out of work,” he said.
The return of the late-night shows could be a salve to the networks, which rake in significant ad revenue from them. That income was threatened when the strike put the shows into repeats, turning away audiences. Viewership of “The Tonight Show,” which produces an estimated $50 million a year in profit, has plunged about 40% since the strike began.
Hollywood writers are battling their studio and network employers over how much they should be paid when their work is distributed over the Internet. Late-night talk shows were the first to slip into reruns because they depend on writers to craft the monologue and jokes that play off the day’s events. Virtually every scripted prime-time series has ceased production.
NBC’s Conan O’Brien and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel also returned to the air Wednesday night without their writers. Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert plan to return Monday.
As Leno, O’Brien and Kimmel sought to explain their decision and ally themselves with their picketing staffs Wednesday, CBS hosts David Letterman and Craig Ferguson basked in their status as the only late-night comedians with the blessing of the Writers Guild of America. Last week, Letterman’s production company, Worldwide Pants, which owns both shows, crafted an independent deal with the union, allowing their staffs to return to work.
“We are back!” Ferguson announced on the air, adding that Letterman helped the shows get a “special pass.”
“It is the TV equivalent of diplomatic immunity,” he said. “I’m like Switzerland in TV.”
For Letterman, the moment was a decidedly triumphant one: Not only did he circumvent the political minefield of the labor dispute, but he also was back on the air with an advantage over his rivals, who must now persuade high-profile guests to cross a picket line to appear on their programs.
On Wednesday, Leno had on GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee and O’Brien chatted up actor Bob Saget, while Letterman played host to fast-improvising Robin Williams.
Letterman, whose program has long lagged in second place behind Leno’s, sought to make the most of his position. After a saucy opening in which high-kicking dancers sashayed across the stage with “Writers Guild on Strike” signs, Letterman -- boasting a bushy, 8-week-old beard -- declared happily, “You’re watching the ‘Late Show,’ the only show on the air now that has jokes written by union writers.”
Whether a union writer had a hand in the show’s first joke of the night, however, was unclear. Democrat presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a taped cameo introducing Letterman, announced, “Dave has been off the air for eight long weeks because of the writers strike. Tonight, he’s back. Oh, well, all good things come to an end.”
Later in the show, Letterman turned over the nightly “Top Ten” list to a group of striking writers from different programs, each of whom ticked off a different demand they had of producers.
The tone was substantially more subdued in another part of Midtown Manhattan as NBC’s O’Brien taped his first show since November while fellow guild members picketed outside his Rockefeller Center studio.
O’Brien, who also helped pay the salaries of his nonwriting staff while his show was off the air, expressed frustration with the situation.
“We’re back now but, sadly, we do not have our writers with us,” O’Brien said, displaying his own beard, one he said he grew to show solidarity with the writers.
“I want to make this clear: I support their cause. These are very talented, very creative people who work extremely hard, and I believe what they’re asking for is fair. My biggest wish is that they get a great deal very quickly and get back here because we desperately need them on the show.”
At one point, to fill time on the hourlong program, O’Brien demonstrated his wedding-ring-spinning technique.
As she picketed in the frigid air outside, Gina Gionfriddo, a writer-producer on NBC’s “Law & Order,” said guild members were not upset with O’Brien and the other hosts for going back on the air without their writers.
“They’ve stood behind us, they’ve paid their staffs out of their own pockets, and we don’t have any doubt at all that they want to be back to work with writers,” Gionfriddo said. “I see this picket line as an effort to help them get their writers back.”
In fact, WGA officials took pains to stress that the pickets they set up outside the studios where O’Brien and Leno taped their shows were aimed at their network, not the hosts themselves.
“Conan has been supportive of the strike, so we’re in no way out here to criticize him as an individual,” said WGA East President Michael Winship, adding that the picket line was designed to dissuade guests from appearing on the program. “It’s important to make the point, especially on this day when these shows are going back on the air, that we’re still out here, we’re still on strike.”
Still, the decision to picket the late-night shows -- whose hosts are guild members -- caused debate within its own ranks. ABC’s Kimmel called the strategy “ridiculous” during the first few moments of his show Wednesday.
“I mean, Jay Leno, he paid his staff while they were out of work. Conan did the same thing,” Kimmel said, not mentioning that he also helped keep his staff afloat. “And I don’t know, I just think at a certain point you back off a little bit.”
On Wednesday, writers for both NBC late-night programs were conspicuously absent from the pickets outside their programs.
“Our beef isn’t with Jay; it’s with NBC,” said Joe Medeiros, strike captain and head writer for “The Tonight Show,” whose writers chose to picket NBC Universal’s headquarters in Universal City instead of NBC’s Burbank studio where Leno’s show is taped. “We want them to give us the same deal that Letterman gave his writers.”
Until a broader industry deal is reached, however, most of the late-night hosts will be forced to carry on without writing staffs, relying heavily on improvisation and guest interviews. Guild officials have said that, under WGA strike rules, the hosts are not allowed to write materials themselves. Those who violate the rules can face disciplinary action, including expulsion from the union.
However, Leno’s monologue Wednesday -- which he said on the air he wrote himself and tested on his wife -- raised questions about whether there was a consensus about the rules.
When asked why Leno felt his monologue was within strike guidelines, a source close to the show pointed to a passage in the WGA Basic Agreement that excludes material written by hosts for themselves. However, guild attorneys have said that exception applies only to performers on struck shows who are not members of the guild.
A spokesman for the guild, contacted after the show, said the union was aware of Leno’s monologue and wanted to discuss it with him, but he declined to comment further.
Meanwhile, the guild renewed its pledge Wednesday to protest the Golden Globe Awards on Jan. 13 hosted by the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn., despite the group’s efforts to get the same kind of interim agreement that allowed Letterman’s and Ferguson’s writers to go back to work.
Toward that end, Dick Clark Productions, producer of the award show, was prepared to make a deal with the WGA for all of its productions, including the American Music Awards.
The WGA has little interest in giving the Globes a pass, however, because doing so would help NBC, which is televising the event, and in effect remove one of the union’s weapons in its fight against the major studios, sources close to the guild said.
Actors could also spoil plans for a Golden Globes show.
Screen Actors Guild leaders said late Wednesday that they planned to meet with Globe actor nominees this week to advise them of their rights. Although SAG has stopped short of asking members to not attend the Globes, a guild spokeswoman said most of the nominees had said they would not cross picket lines to attend.
“Screen Actors Guild members will be happy to appear on projects using WGA writers, and we will continue to support the WGA in every way possible in its efforts to achieve a fair contract,” SAG President Alan Rosenberg said in a statement.
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richard.verrier@latimes.com
Times staff writer Meg James contributed to this report.
