Fall TV Blog

After a two-month hiatus, Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien will return to TV January 2—despite the on-going writers’ strike.

“Unfortunately, now with the New Year upon us, I am left with a difficult decision,” O’Brien said in a statement Monday, released through NBC, about his show Late Night with Conan O’Brien.

“Either go back to work and keep my staff employed, or stay dark, and allow 80 people, many of whom have worked for me for 14 years, to lose their jobs,” O’Brien’s statement read. “An unwritten version of Late Night, though not desirable, is possible— and no one has to be fired.”
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Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage

Is there a correlation between the WGA strike and misplacing your Schick Quattro razor? For David Letterman and Conan O’Brien there is. The two late-night talk show hosts have taken to growing “strike” beards. While Letterman is sporting what we call the “full hairy,” O’Brien (who joked in early December that he’s been growing his since the strike of 1988) has something of a dusting of cinnamon scruff, like the first snowfall of the season.

• Late night hosts Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien are considering airing new episodes starting in January whether or not the writers strike is resolved. Going back on the air without their scribes would be no laughing matter. Literally.

• 30 Rock has blended the show with American Express commercials, thanks to “podbusters”—a.k.a., short segments starring the 30 cast that have nothing to do with that episode’s plot. We remember watching the last podbuster on our Sony 52-inch LCD television—the picture quality was fantastic!

• A new brand of DVR can hold 2,300 hours of programming. That’s almost enough to record all the fights on The View this year.

• Andre Birleanu, a contestant on America’s Most Smartest Model, claims that VH1 is destroying his career by forbidding him from responding to allegations that he molested two women. “They tell me not to say anything, but then they don’t stand up for me,” said Birleanu, who pouted—and was promptly offered a fragrance campaign.

Photo: Kevin Foley/NBC; Timothy White/NBC

Want to host The Tonight Show? There may be a temporary opening, but it comes with a big catch—you’d have to cross a picket line.

With Jay Leno honoring the writers’ strike, producers are considering using guest hosts to bring the show back on the air, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

“All sorts of things are being discussed, including guest hosts,” says Debbie Vickers, the show’s executive producer. “Our preference is that we return to production of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno as host as soon as possible. We want to protect the staff, who have been loyal to this show for decades, in the same way that Johnny Carson reluctantly returned without his writers in 1988.”
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