With the writers' strike going nowhere, and negotiations at a standstill, Jay Leno and his "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," along with Conan O'Brien and his Late Night with Conan O'Brien," will start to air again on NBC (GE), with new episodes starting January 2.
"Now that the talks have broken down and there are no further negotiations scheduled, I feel it's my responsibility to get my 100 nonwriting staff, which were laid off, back to work," Leno said.
He's right, of course. Writers are doing far more damage to people working for the networks than the networks themselves, as a large number of them are no longer working because of their strike.
O'Brien has the same concerns over the 80 non-writer members of his staff as well, saying, " ... An unwritten version of 'Late Night,' ... is possible - and no one has to be fired."
On December 7, talks between the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) and the Writers Guild of America (WGA) broke off when the Guild refused to drop some of its more contentious issues from the bargaining table. The strike began on November 5.
This will probably force the rest of the late night talks shows hosts to come back to work as well. The ratings differential will make the decision a mute point.
With the strike going on for so long, and no end in site, more celebrities and entertainers are open to crossing picket lines to take part in the shows.
I think this is a great move by the talk show hosts and the networks. They can't allow their other workers and families to suffer because the already highly paid writers want even more than they're already getting.
» Jimmy Kimmel Next in Line of Late-night Talk Show Hosts Returning to Air from BizofShowBiz
The parade of late night talk show hosts continue to return to television, as new episodes of "Jimmy Kimmel Live" will start airing in January. We talked about this a couple days ago when Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien decided... [Read More]
Tracked on: December 19, 2007 10:08 PM | Permalink to Trackback