Just like the strikes in the olden days, the WGA strike is leaving people scrambling for guests. Wait, no. The strikes in olden days left people scrambling for food, not actors. It’s close, though, and certainly every bit as frightening. Human beings can live for months without food, but can only live for a maximum of seven days without Brad Pitt. Around day 5 your kidneys shut down, and the liver tends to go around day 6. The hosts of late night television, back on the air but without any actor guests, have been scrambling to fill their vacant spots in a desperate attempt to save keep us alive. The Screen Actors Guild has cruelly forbade any of its members from appearing on any non-WGA sanctioned shows. That effectively means they can only show up for David Letterman and Craig Ferguson, whose production company Worldwide Pants has come to its own agreement with the WGA. So what’s a late night host to do? Bring in other late night hosts as guests of course!

The talk-show hosts, who both returned to the airwaves last Wednesday without their respective writing teams and with picketers outside their respective studios, are turning into unlikely allies in the late-night race, with both agreeing to appear as guests on each other’s shows next Thursday, in the wake of a writers’ strike-induced guest drought.

“If Jay and I can come together and guest on each other’s shows, surely there is hope for peace in the Middle East,” Kimmel said in a joint statement released by ABC and NBC Sunday morning.

“There are only a few people in the world who know how tough this job is,” Leno said. “Jimmy is one of them. It will be fun to discuss who’s a good guest, who’s a difficult guest and everything else that comes with sitting behind these desks.” The mutual back scratching will help fill not only headlines but what’s proving to be hard-to-populate guest slots for the late-night shows since their return to air.

[From E! News]

I’m no expert, but it seems to me that writers and actors are incredibly loyal to their unions. And something tells me they have long memories. Jimmy Kimmel seems to have done himself quite the disservice recently by voicing his opposition to the writer’s strike.

And while Leno has teetered on the brink of violating guild rules since returning to the air, penning his own monologue jokes, despite supposedly standing in solidarity as a striking writer, Kimmel himself has voiced disapproval of the strict code and unwavering solidarity he’s meant to display with his unemployed wordsmiths.

“I don’t want to depart too much from the party line, but I think it’s ridiculous,” he said on his first night back of the strike and SAG’s insistence that members avoid the late-night shows that did not score a WGA-sanctioned agreement. “Jay Leno, he paid his staff while they were out. Conan did the same thing. I don’t know. I just think at a certain point you back off a little bit.”

Later, he stripped his opinions of all party-line vestiges, saying flat out, “I’m pissed off, I’ll be honest with you.”

[From E! News]

I’m pretty sure Jimmy Kimmel is going to find concrete in his shoes within the next three days. Wait, these are writers… so he’s probably going to find ink in his shoes. Maybe a few random letters stripped off his computer’s keyboard. Nothing teaches you to shut up like some blue ink stains and your favorite S and A keys smashed to pieces.

Jay Leno is in a world of hurt. Apparently he didn’t quite understand the WGA’s rules about writing material for his show. All of the late night acts are going back on the air in the next week or so, with Leno and Letterman back on this past Wednesday. Letterman’s production company, Worldwide Pants, came to a separate agreement with the Writer’s Guild, essentially agreeing to honor all of their demands in terms of royalties and web payouts. That allowed him (and Craig Ferguson, who’s show is also produced by Letterman’s company) to go back on their air with his usual team of writers. The blogosphere was alive with excitement: lots of people noting that Letterman would finally beat Leno in the ratings. However the general consensus is that Jay Leno did a better job with just himself than Letterman did with his whole team. Ouch.

Technically, Leno’s only option was to perform his monologue spontaneously. That’s a tall order. As a writer and member of the WGA, he was not allowed to pen anything beforehand. Though it’s likely that late-night hosts Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Kimmel wrote something before they stepped on stage, Leno openly violated the rules, admitting that he wrote his monologue beforehand.

“Tonight Show” host Jay Leno could face disciplinary action from the Writers Guild of America for writing his monologue while the nearly 2-month-old writers strike continues.
Leno, a member of the guild, met Thursday with WGA West President Patric Verrone to discuss his decision to pen his opening segment. During the meeting, Leno was told that “writing for ‘The Tonight Show’ constitutes a violation of the [WGA] strike rules,’ the WGA said in a statement.

“[Leno] was pretty flagrant in saying he wrote his monologue,” said Sherry Goldman, a spokeswoman for WGA East. “The other hosts … found a way around it.” It’s not yet clear what would happen to Leno if he continues to write monologues in the midst of the strike, but he could be brought before the WGA’s disciplinary committee, Goldman said.

[From MarketWatch]

The WGA’s strike contract is notoriously hard to interpret, however most people outside of the WGA (including NBC) agree that anyone outside of prime time is allowed to write their own material.

“The WGA agreement permits Jay Leno to write his own monologue for `The Tonight Show,’” NBC said in a statement Thursday. “The WGA is not permitted to implement rules that conflict with the terms of the collective bargaining agreement between the studios and the WGA.”

[From the Associated Press]

This strike is getting pretty tiresome. And I say that not as a reflection on the writers, but on the corporations. The WGA is fairly rigid: I’m pretty sure they’d get mad if one of their members wrote so much as a grocery list at this point. Remember that note you jotted down on a Post-it, reminding you to call your aunt? Violation. But they have a point. If they start making a bunch of exceptions, pretty soon the strike won’t stand for anything. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers website has a counter on their website of how much money the writers are losing in the short term by striking. What they don’t have a counter for is how much money the writers would lose in the long term if they didn’t strike. This is pretty much a battle between principles (writers) and egos (the alliance). Get ready for a lot of game shows and reality TV next year.

David Letterman, Craig Ferguson, Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert will return to their respective talk shows this week. Letterman’s company has struck an agreement with the Writers Guild of America that allows him to use writers for “The Late Show.” Craig Ferguson’s “Late Late Show” is controlled by Letterman’s production company, Worldwide Pants, and also has the advantage of falling under the interim agreement and being able to use writers. Leno and the rest of the late night hosts will have to make due with whatever they can muster that doesn’t violate the WGA contract. That is expected to entail longer celebrity interviews and more off the cuff audience interaction. “On the street” segments are also anticipated.

The first celebrity guest booked on Letterman’s show is Robin Williams. Both Letterman and Ferguson have an added edge over their talkshow host competitors in that guests don’t have to cross picket lines to appear. Williams is one guest who certainly wouldn’t need a scripted Q&A to appear, however. He is particularly gifted in off the cuff absurdity which can sometimes be hard to follow.

Steven Colbert and Jon Stewart are expected to be scrambling to come up with material that’s not prepared. They rely on scripted segments for their shows and will be hard pressed to ad lib. Under the WGA contract they can’t even use ideas that are prepared ahead of time by writers. These two strike me as cleverer than most, so we’ll have to see how they deal with the situation. It will also be interesting to see if Letterman and O’Brien have shaved their “strike beards,” or if they’ll grace us with their unshaven faces at least for one night.

As for how the writer’s strike continues to affect television, I read an interesting article that compared the 1988 strike to the current strike and said that there’s evidence that television lost 10% of its viewership almost permanently after the five month strike from March to August. This current strike could result in a nearly 30% drop in television viewers and could go a long way toward strengthening the audience for online content and web-based shows. And we may have to make due with more open-ended interviews with lesser-known celebrities on the talk shows. Maybe that’s an added benefit to refusing to cross picket lines – celebrities don’t have to worry about sounding stupid if they can’t rehearse their answers ahead of time.

Here’s a link to a wikipedia article that has an updated list of how many episodes are available for specific shows.

Thanks to the NY Times and The Wall St. Journal for the details for this story.

Letterman is shown on 10/20/05 with a horse, but I swear to you this picture is captioned “Madonna Visits The Late Show with David Letterman” by the photo agency, PRPhotos.

Last week we briefly mentioned that there was a possibility that the late night talk show hosts would return to work in the next few months. It’s looking like that will definitely happen, and all five of the hosts are trying to coordinate their return so they all come back on the same night. Their hope is to avoid some of the ire of the WGA and skirt the criticism that Ellen DeGeneres and Carson Daly received when they returned to work. Ellen hardly stopped work at all – a week at the most – and Carson returned a few weeks ago. Jay Leno, David Letterman, Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel and Craig Ferguson are all talking with each other behind closed doors, trying to agree on a date when they’ll all go back to work.

If the late-night shows go back into production before the strike is settled, at least some members of the Writers Guild will understand – the late-night comedy writers themselves. “We will never be able to repay [Letterman] for what he did for us,” says “Late Show” writer Bill Sheft, who also serves as the show’s union rep for the Writers Guild. “Dave Letterman on the air without writers and pissed off about it would be as powerful as anything we [union members] can do. He will rail nightly at the greedy pinheads that put him in this position.

“He made the right decision, and when and if he decides to come back, it will be the right decision,” Sheft said. Letterman was the first late-night host who said he would continue to pay his staff out of his own pocket while the strike was on. The other late-show hosts soon followed when the networks began informing the idled late-night staffs that they would be laid off. “We understand the ‘Late Show,’ ” Sheft says. “The fact that other shows fell in line after him is enormous . . . We can march in a circle all day and blog all we want, but, to me, he’s been an off-air supporter. Maybe his greatest potential is as an on-air provocateur.”

“Believe me, all these guys are going crazy,” says one late-night talk show executive. “They’ve had to sit on the sidelines for the last six weeks and watch the world go by without having their soapboxes. It’s hard for them, and it’s getting harder “The fact is they’re talking, but no one wants to be first or the only one, for that matter,” says a knowledgeable network executive. “But I think their power will come in their solidarity. It’s a hot potato.”

[From the New York Post]

It actually does make a lot of sense that the late night hosts could be very vocal advocates for their writers if they choose to come back on the air. It seems like they’ve done the best job they could, and will have stayed off the air for several months in a show of support. A lot of crew and staff members lost their jobs, and most of the late night hosts covered their salaries themselves. If they’re on the air and able to plug their writers every night, that could actually be a good thing. And considering how supportive all the hosts have been so far, I think that’s a reasonable expectation.

In more lighthearted news, both Conan O’Brien and David Letterman have been showing off their “Strike Beards.” Conan even made a YouTube video plugging the strike beard. That’s really not fair, as a woman I can’t show my solidarity by growing a strike beard. I’m trying to figure out what I could do instead… strike hairy legs? Yeah, I’m going with that. “No I’m not lazy, I’m supporting writers!” I will be so extra-dateable now.

Jay Leno is a man with a big ol’ heart of gold – and a big ol’ wallet full of gold too. He is, very generously, paying his fired non-writing staff for the next week. And longer, if the writers strike continues.

Leno has decided to pay his non-writing staff out of his pocket through next week, sources said Saturday. That could be extended if the writers’ strike is not resolved by then.

Tonight Show executive producer Debbie Vickers is said to have been involved in the decision and reportedly began calling laid-off employees Saturday.

A couple of days after the Writers Guild of America strike began November 5, the star of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno told about 80 of his staffers that they need not worry about their finances. Leno was so adamant about paychecks being safe, many didn’t bother looking for new jobs even though NBC was forecasting layoffs.

So it came as quite a shock on Friday when the entire staff was told that they were not only out of a job but also that they weren’t guaranteed of being rehired once The Tonight Show returns.

“Some people were crying. Some people were screaming,” said one employee speaking on the condition of anonymity.

[From Sydney Morning Herald]

NBC’s Conan O’Brian is also paying his staff of around fifty on a week-to-week basis.

I’m not sure if out of his own pocket means out of Leno’s pocket, or out of his show’s pocket. Either way it must cost him at some point.

Despite the pay offer, it seems that some of Leno’s staff are getting upset that the writer’s are still striking and putting non-writing jobs at risk. Which is of course the exact kind of tension the networks are hoping to create to put pressure on the strikers to end their protest.

Leno himself has also been criticized, with one of his staff upset at earlier promises of people not losing their jobs. He says it gave the staff a false sense of security back when they should have begun job hunting. Although I doubt any television networks are hiring they could have looked for work elsewhere.

The administrative staff are also upset at what they consider to be a very low Christmas bonus of only $200, although I’m not sure what a Christmas Bonus should be in America, in New Zealand we don’t have them. I’m starting a campaign for them right away. I know a lot of people rely on that annual bonus to live.

In the meantime the strike continues, and re-runs are the order of the day on most television networks. Hopefully the strikers negotiate a good deal for themselves, as there is a huge amount of pressure on them to get shows back up and running.

Note by Celebitchy: Rumor has it that recent talks were successful, and that negotiations between the writers and networks are moving forward. The strike is expected to end by Christmas.

Jay Leno is shown on 11/14/07 out on his motorcycle supporting the strikers. Thanks to Splash News.

This week’s National Enquirer came out before the news that Jay Leno refused to cross picket lines and that all of his non-writing staff were threatened with layoffs at the end of this week. It looks like the writers’ strike isn’t going to end any time soon, but if The Tonight Show can manage to find guests hosts they might be able to come out of reruns and save staff jobs. It’s going to be a tricky situation because it could be hard to find stars who are also willing to cross picket lines by appearing on the show during the strike.

Whatever happens with The Tonight Show, Jay Leno was slated to be replaced in 2009 with Conan O’Brien. Jay was hoping to continue hosting the show well into his old age and is pissed that NBC is replacing him. So he’s planning to move to Fox and get another talk show that will air at the same time as The Tonight Show and directly compete with Conan when he takes over hosting duties. He also plans to take all his staff with him, and considering how shitty NBC is treating them, they’re likely to come:

[Jay Leno] is planning to get the last laugh – by jumping to Fox TV, say sources. Jay wants to go head-to-head against Conan with pretty much the same show he’s doing now – and the comic wants to take all his NBC staffers with him, according to insiders.

He even wants to continue to tape at the same Burbank studio where he’s made a fortune for NBC.

“Jay is a creature of habit, and he’d like to stay right where he is,” revealed a source close to Leno. “He’s only 57 – and he feels as if he could do this for another 15 years.”

[From The National Enquirer, print edition, November 19, 2007]

Of course who knows what the future of television will be if the writers’ strike goes on for months as predicted. The networks seem to be playing hardball, and they may ultimately be the ones to lose if people become accustomed to getting their entertainment elsewhere. Familiar personalities like Leno could be off the air until spring. Although it seems like the nightly interview shows will always be a television staple, you never know how this will play out. Leno’s show has suffered the most in the ratings, experiencing a drop of over 750,000 homes. Whether people will come back for a guest host, or even when Jay finally returns, remains to be seen.

Header image from tv.yahoo.com.

Jay Leno is one of many entertainers who is refusing to cross picket lines while the Writer’s Guild is on strike. NBC has essentially stated that if Leno doesn’t cross the lines and return to work, they will lay off the rest of the “Tonight Show” non-writing staff. NBC making it clear that they’re more than willing to save some money by firing long-time employees that have nothing to do with the strike. It also seems like they’re doing some really dirty dealing and putting completely unethical pressure on Leno to return to work to save his staff’s jobs. The other alternative is for the “Tonight Show” to use guest hosts – certainly there are entertainers out there that are willing to cross the lines. NBC has also said the same thing to Conan O’Brian’s staff.

NBC informed the nonwriting staff of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno that it will be laid off at the end of next week in the wake of the show shutting down for the writers’ strike. And with Leno still refusing to cross the picket line, the show is looking at coming back on the air Nov. 19 with guest hosts so that it can save the jobs of the nonwriters. “All sorts of things are being discussed, including guest hosts,” Tonight Show executive producer Debbie Vickers said. “Our preference is that we return to production of The Tonight Show with Jay as host as soon as possible.”

But Vickers also wants to save the jobs of her nonwriting staffers. “We want to protect the staff, who have been loyal to this show for decades, in the same way that Johnny Carson reluctantly returned without his writers in 1988,” she said. Late-night shows have gone into repeats since the strike began Monday as the hosts walked out in solidarity with their writing staffs. With the shows shut down, networks can cut costs by laying off most of the rest of the staff.

And Leno’s chief writer doesn’t expect Leno back anytime soon. “I talk to Jay every day, and he will not be the first [late-night host] to cross the picket line,” said Tonight Show head writer Joe Medeiros, also a strike captain for the Writers Guild of America. “So they are looking at guest hosts as one possibility so all those people don’t have to lose their jobs.”

[From Broadcasting & Cable]

That is really low of NBC. CBS and FOX have both tried to put similar pressure on many of their employees, by telling people that are producers/writers that they still have to honor their producing contracts and go to work each day, despite the strike. Since most of those people started as writers, they have a lot of sympathy for them – and most of them are still members of the Writer’s Guild and can’t work during the strike. So they’re between a rock and a hard place.

I’ve heard a lot about all the things the writers are doing, all the talent that’s lining up behind them, and how long the strike will likely go on. What I haven’t heard much about are the entertainment execs that should be sweating bullets and giving in to their more than reasonable demands.

You are either a Leno fan or a Letterman fan, but everyone seems to love Conan. (At least in the land of Cara anyway.) Jay was rumored to be hesitant to hand over the reigns to a successor. However, NBC has made a statement regarding the host status of “The Tonight Show.”

“Conan O’Brien will take over `The Tonight Show’ in 2009,” NBC Universal President and CEO Jeff Zucker said Monday in New York at an event arranged by Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. Zucker said he’d like Leno to remain with the company and that “we are in those conversations now. I’m hopeful that Jay will be with us.”

[Associated Press]

Jay has been sitting in the host chair for 15 years. Conan O’Brien was set over 3 years ago to take over for Leno. He has also stated that he is perfectly ok with leaving, but as the clock ticks his attachment to the show keeps him wanting more. Johnny Carson was 74 when he stepped down and Leno will be 59 in his 2009 departure. The air of Jay being pushed out rather than bowing out was addressed in the LA Times and through other various media outlets.

“Apparently because O’Brien, 44, has a younger audience than Leno, 57. Younger is always better in television, although CBS is evidently not as concerned about the age of its late-night host. David Letterman, 60, has a deal with that network through 2010. Maybe the Peacock Network just wants someone with a longer-term future, so this is where you get off, Jay.”

Then the CNN rumor reared its head in the debate. Word on the street is that the news based network wants Leno to replace Larry King. Contractually speaking, Leno is to remain off the air for at least six months.

It’s all very reminiscent of the Johnny Carson replacement issues NBC had last time over the show. Either way, I wish the best for Jay. But I can’t wait for Conan to get his red head on “The Tonight Show.” That man is over 6 ’4” of walking funny in a suit.

Halle Berry was on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on 10/19, showing him pictures of her face distorted that she made on her Mac. She shows what a technological idiot she is by asking Jay if he’s hip and knows about this program Photobooth on the Mac where “you point the camera toward you, and it morphs your face into all these silly other people.” (That’s so Kai Power Tools circa 1996, but whatever.) She says she uses the program to mess with her face and cheer herself up when she’s feeling down. The first picture she shows is of herself with a distorted nose, blurting “‘This one, this is like my Jewish cousin!”

She then said “That’s mean!” Jay said “I’m glad you said it, ok great,” and she answered “OMG have I just like ruined my whole career?”

Here’s a video clip of that part of the show with the remark cut out.

Page Six reports that the audience was dead silent afterwards and that they added the laugh track afterwards when they cut out the “Jewish” part.

She was embarrassed after the show, realizing the enormous anti-semitic blunder she’d made, and then try to backtrack by saying her Jewish assistants thought it up, not her. She apologized to everyone, and asked The Tonight Show to cover her ass by cutting that remark, which they did:

According to one audience member, “She introduced the first photo by saying, ‘Here’s where I look like my Jewish cousin!’ – it was a picture of her with a huge, distorted nose. No one laughed, and Jay nervously said, ‘I’m glad you said that and not me.’ When the show aired, they cut out her ‘Jewish’ comment and added a laugh track to the bit.”

Another guest in the audience told us, “If you watch the clip, you can see Halle saying the word ‘Jewish,’ though obviously there is no audio. NBC covered her a – -. Ms. Berry should know how unbelievably inappropriate her comment was . . . She should be ashamed of herself.”

Berry, 41, who sounded like she was near tears, told Page Six last night: “I so didn’t mean to offend anybody – and after the show I realized it could be seen as offensive, so I asked Jay to take it out, and he did.”

The gorgeous actress, who is 4 1/2 months pregnant with her first child, by boyfriend Gabriel Aubry, said, “What happened was I was backstage before the show and I have three girls who are Jewish who work for me. We were going through pictures to see which ones looked silly, and one of my Jewish friends said [of the big-nose picture], ‘That could be your Jewish cousin!’ And I guess it was fresh in my mind, and it just came out of my mouth. But I didn’t mean to offend anybody. I didn’t. I didn’t mean any harm.”

Berry, who even offered to call Page Six’s source and apologize in person, said, “It was just a lighthearted segment that was meant to make fun of myself. There was a picture where I said I looked like Monica Lewinsky and one where I said I looked like Jay. It was just supposed to be a silly segment. I am so sorry, and I apologize.”

[From Page Six]

That’s all pretty weak, but at least she owned up to it and apologized afterwards. Halle Berry just lost about 20 points in my estimation. If I didn’t have a strong opinion of her before, I do now. It doesn’t seem mean-spirited so much as just ignorant and stupid.

Thanks to user JonDonnis on Superior Pics for the full video download. We cut this version from that.

I don’t normally sit around having a lot of respect for Rob Schneider… because he’s Rob Schneider. He’s Deuce Bigalow. Actually, that is a good reason to have respect for him. Anyway, last week Lindsay Lohan was scheduled to be on the “Tonight Show.” Then she was arrested on a DUI for the second time, you know the rest of the story. So Rob Schneider took her place on the show, dressing up like her, including the ridiculous ankle monitoring device Lindsay’s been parading around. He got some good jokes in there, but a lot of it was funny because it was true. When Jay Leno asked Schneider-as-Lohan what happened, he responded, “Well, it was my assistant’s fault. I asked for a Diet Coke,” jokingly implying that the assistant mistook coke the drink for coke the drug. Leno also asked Schneider-as-Lohan which of her movies was her favorite. “I think Herbie Fully Loaded. Herbie was the car; I was fully loaded.” At one point Schneider took off the alcohol monitoring device and started drinking from it, revealing that it was actually a flask. I thought the whole thing was pretty funny. Dina Lohan, aka WonderMom, didn’t.

“We have a great respect for Jay Leno, but we are disappointed in the path he chose to allow a guest to make light of a very serious situation concerning Lindsay. Thank you to Craig Ferguson for not making a mockery of such a serious situation to which teens and young adults are facing across the country.”

[From Access Hollywood]

Well today, Rob Schneider responded, and not in his characteristic juvenile humor way. He was right on the ball.

“’When Mrs. Lohan stops partying with her child, then I’ll have an ounce of respect for her… I don’t care if her parents are both crummy – you cannot blame your parents anymore. She’s not a kid… Lindsay, get it together, America will forgive you but you gotta do something positive with your life. I hope she does okay but at a certain point, there’s so many bigger problems in the world than Lindsay Lohan. I hope she gets her head out of her nice, cute little rear end and finds a life for herself. She’s very talented, and a special little actress but there are so many people out there who’d trade positions with her in a heartbeat and use it better than she is.’”

[From People]

That’s so well said, I don’t even have a snotty reply. Except that I’m pleasantly surprised that such an on-the-mark statement came from Rob Schneider. I can’t believe that Dina Lohan has time to comment on Rob Schneider’s parody of Lindsay, considering all she has going on. She’s got a kid about to lose her life on one side of the country and she’s busy fighting her estranged husband on the other side. She really thought people making fun of Lindsay for being a moron was so important she had to condemn them? Who in the world is that nutcase to judge anyone? It’s like the rest of the world realizes she’s an enabler and a user, and she just sits there singing “I don’t hear you!” over and over with her hands on her ears. So Dina Lohan, thanks for being such a moron that you make Rob Schneider look like Socrates. It’s been a good day for you.

Note by Celebitchy: I’ve been looking for the video, but it’s not available on youtube any more thanks to a “copyright claim” by NBC. Don’t those network suits realize yet that the Internet is the best publicity they’re going to get?