With a tentative deal reached in the writers strike, late night shows will be some of the first to make its return to television. Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Late Night With Seth Meyers on NBC, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver on HBO, Jimmy Kimmel Live on ABC, and Late Show With Stephen Colbert on CBS, also known as Strike Force Five, have released joint statement about their return. Via The Hollywood Reporter, “Late night shows were among the first programs to shut down after the WGA called its strike on May 2, as they rely on freshly written materials for each night show.”
John Oliver’s show will return first on Sunday October 1, with the other four late night hosts making their post-strike debut Monday night. Fallon, Meyers, Oliver, Kimmel, and Colbert hosted a podcast during the strike to raise money for their staff that were not working due to the strike; they called the podcast Strike Force Five. According to The Hollywood Reporter, “After reaching a tentative agreement with media companies, leadership of the Writers Guild of America voted on Tuesday to end the strike, allowing its 11,500 members to return to work. The contract still has to be ratified through a vote by the full membership, set to take place in early October.” With writers being a necessity on late night television for their innovative material, those programs were some of the first to halt production after the announcement of the WGA strike on May 2.
In the joint statement posted to social media by Strike Force Five, it read, “…their mission complete, the founding members for Strike Force 5 will return to their network television shows this Monday 10/2, and one of them to premium cable on 10/1. Of course in greater sense, the Strike Force 5 will never end, because Strike Force 5 is not a place, Strike Force 5 is not a people, Strike Force 5 is barely a podcast… Nay, Strike Force 5 is an idea…” Daytime talk shows such as The Drew Barrymore Show, The Jennifer Hudson Show, and The Talk, and late night sketch show, Saturday Night Live, have not yet announced when they will return. Before the WGA struck a tentative deal with the AMPTP, The Drew Barrymore Show began filming without writers; this decision was not positively received by the writers or viewers. Barrymore made the decision not to continue filming until a deal was made.
With the continuation of the SAG-AFTRA strike, guests that will appear on the late night shows can be SAG-AFTRA members as talk shows are covered by a separate contract, but guests cannot promote their work.