You’ll be watching a “Tonight Show” rerun on Monday if last-ditch talks don’t yield favorable results in the stalemate between film and TV writers and media companies.
Right now picketers are preparing signs and strike sheets in New York and Los Angeles. However, according to news reports, both sides agreed to meet with a federal mediator on Sunday in a last-ditch effort to avoid an all out strike that would send thousands of writers to the picket line.
But, given the current state of affairs (negotiations between the two parties began in July and were joined this week by a federal mediator) I wouldn’t count on seeing any new late-night talk shows for a while.
“The studios made it clear that they would rather shut down this town than reach a fair and reasonable deal,” Patric Verrone, president of the western chapter of the guild, said at a news conference late last night.
Let me break this down for you. If the writers strike (they haven’t done so in 20 years) the first casualty would be late-night talk shows, which are dependent on current events to fuel monologues. (God forbid the comedian-hosts of these shows actually churn out fresh material themselves to keep their shows afloat.) That means “The Tonight Show” on NBC, which would have aired interviews with Garth Brooks and Tommy Lee Jones on Monday will send their guests home. In addition, execs at Comedy Central said “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report” would likely go to repeats as well.
There’s still no word on what will happen with “The Late Show with David Letterman.” During the 1988 writers strike, Letterman, then host of NBC’s “Late Night,” initially aired reruns, but when the strike dragged on for 22 weeks he decided enough was enough and started appearing in new episodes.
Next in line to feel the affect of the strike is daytime TV, including live talk shows such as “The View” and soap operas. Your favorite primetime TV programs wouldn’t be affected unless the strike lasted longer than two months. Most TV shows have enough scripts or completed shows in hand to last until early next year.
So, basically, unless studios offer a more lucrative deal with a bigger cut from video sales and shows sold or streamed over the Internet to writers by tomorrow then you can kiss your late-night fix goodbye. And then your daytime favs… and then your primetime programs…
All I can say is thank goodness “Dancing with the Stars” is a reality series.