Stewart And Colbert To Go Back On Air

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert will be the latest US talkshow hosts to return to the air despite the continuation of the American writers strike.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, which airs in the UK on More4, and The Colbert Report will return to their US cable channel Comedy Central from January 7, although without their writers.

Stewart and Colbert - who graduated from the Daily Show to his own Comedy Central series - will follow the lead of NBC’s late-night talkshow hosts Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel, who will also return at the beginning of January.

CBS’s David Letterman and Craig Ferguson are also expected to return at the beginning of the new year.

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.”

Comedy Central added: “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report will resume production on January 7 with both shows returning to air that night without their respective writing staffs.

“The January 7 return follows a scheduled two-week, end-of-year hiatus that was previously built into the shows’ production calendars. We continue to hold out hope for a swift resolution to the current stalemate that will enable the shows to be complete again.”

It is not yet known what form the two shows will take as they both rely heavily on scripted monologues and jokes.

Other returning US talkshows are expected to put more emphasis on celebrity guests.

US TV’s live daily late-night talkshows were the first programmes to be hit by the Hollywood writers’ strike last month, with all the famous names coming off air and being replaced by repeats.

The Writers Guild of America began a strike on November 5 over a feud with the major Hollywood studios - including Comedy Central’s parent Viacom - over payments for shows on the internet and other digital media outlets.

In a statement, the WGA said that by “forcing” Stewart and Colbert - who are both members of the guild - back on the air without writers, Comedy Central would not give viewers the “quality shows they’ve come to expect’.

“The only way to get the writing staffs back on the job is for the AMPTP [Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers] companies to come back to the table prepared to negotiate a fair deal with the Writers Guild,” it said.

The strike is also set to play havoc with the awards season, with the guild refusing to give an exemption to the Golden Globes, which are due to take place on January 13, or the Oscars.

The Screen Actors Guild awards on January 27 is currently the only ceremony to get a waiver to use WGA writers.

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– By Leigh Holmwood

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I’d like to see them back. They are the only two ‘funny’ guys on the tube. If they screw up we will forgive. Promise!

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