Of all the shows on US television, the ones which have been hit hardest by the writers' strike are undoubtedly the late night, daily chat shows. They need their writers literally everyday, but recently hosts such as David Letterman came back on air with self-penned monologues. If anything, though, the problem is greater for Jon Stewart and The Daily Show as the writers are also the performers. As such, when it returned on Monday (last night on More4), it was watered down - just Jon Stewart and the guest interview - and a rather uncomfortable affair, to be honest.
With the US primaries well underway, it's unsurprising that Jon Stewart was eager to get back to taking his fantastic sideways look at politics, but should he have crossed the picket line, when the writer/performers/correspondents are such a big part of the show? Take a look at a clip from the show (over the cut), and let us know what you think.
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John Letterman?
Why did Jon do it? The most respected liberal/comedic pundent on TV is now a strike breaker, a scab. Many of us only get our news from the Daily Show and the Colbert Report and Bill Maher, all union members. Now the three of them have crossed the picket line and their liberal, political philosophy and iconoclast commentary seems hypocritical. And besides, their shows stink without the writers. They are the younger Fred Thompsons, articulate when scripted, but empty suits without someone elses words in their mouths. It's not to late Jon. Do a Jack Paar and walk out LIVE, on air, and continue to support your friends, co-workers and writers. You need them more than you know, I've watched your new show.
It's weird, for a start it was clearly being written by someone - it wasn't all off-the-cuff, so I assume Stewart prepared it fairly throughrally himself, perhaps with some help from John Oliver, who looks like he's going to be getting a lot more appearences off the back of this.
If anything Colbert seemed to actually feel a lot shoddier than normal, with plenty of clips and other devices used to fill time.
I have very mixed feelings about it happening at all to be honest, on the one hand the first episode was good in that it really drew attention to what the strike was about (albeit ommiting another major part of it), though I do wish Stewart had gone into more detail about the deal he tried to make with the WGA. But there's only so long you can go on making references saying "see: no writers" before you have to forget about that and get on with making the show.
And once we get to that point the problem is that Stewart and Colbert care so much about their shows, they're not going to let them suck, even if they have to write everything themselves. As such we'll end up with shows that aren't *that* different from when they have a team of ten-writers, as the viewers won't see the reality of Stewart working himself to exhaustion to get the show 'written'. So the outside impression will be that the show (and Leno and others) don't need writers which will lose the WGA support.
Especially since this "We're going on-air without writers, but with almost the same format" ruins the effect of the WGAs agreement with Letterman's company to provide writers for them, as the difference between the late night shows is now less pronounced.
On the otherhand, as the US goes into the early stages of the primaries, we need satirical shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report on air.