Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert to Return to the Airwaves

Posted on December 21, 2007

Jon Stewart (The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert (The Colbert Report) will return the airwaves on January 7, 2008. But there's a catch: they won't have any of their comedy writers, because of the writers' strike. Their return follows a two week hiatus.

Stewart and Colbert said in a statement, "If we cannot [return to work with our writers], we would like to express our ambivalence, but without our writers we are unable to express something as nuanced as ambivalence."

Jay Leno, Jimmy Kimmel and Conan O'Brien are also returning to the airwaves in early January, also without writers. David Letterman, who owns his own production company Worldwide Pants is currently in talks with the Writers Guild to get an exemption so he can use his writers. None of the other comedians own their own shows, so cannot negotiate directly with the WGA.

One strange result of the writers' strike is that the public has been seeing the presidential campaigning without the nightly commentary by comedians. With the comedians back, expect to see much more pointed criticism of all the candidates. That is, if they can improvise enough jokes to make a monologue. It's going to be very interesting to see how they fare.