Late night comedy withdrawal

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love the late night talk and comedy shows -- especially "Late Show with David Letterman" and "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," but including Craig Ferguson, Jimmy Kimmel and Conan O'Brien. (Jay Leno bores me to tears, and I've always resented him for the way his management railroaded Letterman in the "Tonight Show" succession debacle.)

The writer's strike, as it goes on, has the potential to affect many different types of TV shows, but its first effect was to shut down the fresh-every-day late night shows.

Usually, if Letterman is in repeats, at least Jon Stewart is putting out new shows, or vice versa. Only a few times a year (during the holidays, and once or twice during the summer) are both in reruns at the same time.

Both were in reruns this week, and could remain so for many weeks to come.

The last time there was an extended writer's strike, Johnny Carson and Letterman went into reruns, but eventually -- as the strike wore on -- they came back on the air without writers, emphasizing celebrity interviews as opposed to comedy bits. I remember the hoopla over the fact that Johnny would be writing his monologue by himself, and I remember Dave, in lieu of scripted comedy, doing conceptual bits like "Hal Gurnee's Network Time Killers." Hal Gurnee, a legendary TV director from the days of Jack Paar forward, was Letterman's director at the time, and the "Time Killers" were simply novelty acts like jugglers who performed in the show's video control room, where they were introduced -- because it was funnier that way -- by the soft-spoken, poker-faced Gurnee. It was such a funny gag that they occasionally returned to it even after the strike ended. (As recently as a few years ago, Letterman used the same types of novelty acts for an occasional, but much less funny, feature called "Is This Anything?")

At one point last weekend, I heard reports that Kimmel was going to try to stay on the air without writers, but it didn't happen that way.

Back during the last strike, Carson and Letterman pretty much had late night comedy to themselves, exept maybe for Arsenio Hall (I can't remember whether his show was on during that strike or not). Today, the late-night market is much more competitive, and, speaking purely as an uninformed layman, I would imagine that if the strike drags on, the networks will put pressure on Leno, Letterman, Kimmel and the rest to cross the picket line and return to the air without their writing staffs.

Leno, whose cooperative, workaholic, company-man attitude helped lead to his ascension, has reportedly been dismayed at the prospect of giving up "The Tonight Show" to O'Brien in 2009, and no doubt isn't as eager to help out NBC as he once was. As the undisputed ratings leader he probably has less incentive to take the risk of coming back.

Letterman, who owns his own show as well as Ferguson's, seems less focused on the ratings battle than he used to be. He's also got a lot of loyal long-time employees, many going back to his NBC days. His loyalty to the writers may keep him off the air, or his loyalty to other crew members might put him back on the air.

I'm guessing that Kimmel, who has the most to gain, may indeed be the first one back on the air if the strike drags on.

I wrote a column back in February about trying unsuccessfully to attend a taping of "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" while visiting family in Southern California, and I got a nice note back from the producer, who promised me reserved seats the next time I went to visit. I don't know if I'm going to be able to make a trip next year or not, but if I do I certainly hope Jimmy is back on the air by that time!

Unfortunately, "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" have formats that would be all but impossible to carry out without writers. Either host could no doubt write a funny intro segment on his own, and then you could lengthen the guest interview segment to take up the rest of the half hour, but the result would be so different from either show's normal format that I can't imagine them trying it. Plus, Stewart has been supportive of the strike, even offering to pay his writers out of his own pocket for the first two weeks.

Comedy Central, without affiliate schedules to worry about, might decide to take the shows off the air entirely and replace them with some other, less-topical reruns, or even movies, until they're ready to return. They've sometimes done that in the past during summer breaks when Stewart was going off the air for two weeks.

I just wish something would happen, because I miss all of them.

John I. Carney is city editor of the Times-Gazette and covers county government and other topics. His home page is lakeneuron.com.