Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert will join NBC’s late-night hosts in returning with new shows next month.
ABC made the announcement regarding Kimmel’s show, which was later followed by a statement from the comedian who added that it was a difficult decision to resume work without writers, but he planned to do so to save the jobs of other staffers on the show.
“Though it makes me sick to do so without my writers, there are more than a hundred people whose financial well-being depends on our show. It is time to go back to work,” Kimmel said in a written statement.
Similar to his late-night competitors at NBC, Kimmel plans to return to TV with fresh material on January 2nd.
Hours after ABC made the announcement regarding Kimmel Comedy Central released a statement saying that “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report” would resume production on January 7th without their striking writers.
The news came as a blow to picketing writers and they let it be known.
“Comedy Central forcing Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert back on the air will not give the viewers the quality shows they’ve come to expect,” the Writers Guild of America West said in a statement. “The only way to get the writing staffs back on the job is for the (studios) to come back to the table prepared to negotiate a fair deal with the Writers Guild.”
The strong response, which wasn’t issued upon hearing that other late-night vets were returning to the air, reportedly has a lot to do with the fact that “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” rely far more on scripted material than shows like Leno and Kimmel, which are more centered around interviews and musical guests.
In a joint statement, Stewart and Colbert said: “We would like to return to work with our writers. If we cannot, we would like to express our ambivalence, but without our writers we are unable to express something as nuanced as ambivalence.”
Meanwhile, executives with David Letterman’s production company, Worldwide Pants, plan to meet with leaders of striking television writers Friday so his CBS show can return with its writers. Letterman is the only late-night talk show host who has yet to announce when or if he plans to return with new material in the near future.
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