News > Late Night Hosts May Return in January
December 14, 2007
Written by David Morgan
With the strike going badly and with ratings plummeting there is talk amongst the "Big Four" late night talk show hosts (Letterman, Leno, O'Brien, and Ferguson) of returning to the airwaves before the strike ends. The hosts have already stayed off the air for nearly two months out of respect for their writers (Letterman, Leno, and O'Brien are WGA members themselves). The NBC hosts are even paying their staff out of their own pockets to prevent layoffs.
reports that the hosts may return by January 7th, though nothing has been officially decided yet. None of the hosts want to be the first back, and fortunately none of them have to be. Carson Daly has already returned to hosting Last Call without the support of his writers. Though not a WGA member, Daly has been receiving verbal recriminations from the WGA and his own writing staff.
Variety suggests that Leno and O'Brien are the most likely to return in early January with or without their CBS counterparts. The NBC shows have lost half their audiences.
Jimmy Kimmel's repeats have done fairly well comparatively, which Variety interprets as "viewers are checking out the 'new' guy."
ABC's Nightline has been doing very well as a result of the strike. For two weeks in a row now they've beaten Leno and Letterman in the ratings. This is the first time this has happened since 1995.
