WWTBAM Bored

Don't do that again, Jay.

That was the official message from the WGA to Jay Leno -- you can't write jokes for yourself without breaking the guild's strike rules because NBC is a struck company. The Peacock fired back by insisting that the guild's rules are illegal.

Fully story

The last paragraph is interesting.

In its first night back, NBC's latenight leader "The Tonight Show" averaged 7.2 million viewers, according to preliminary Nielsen estimates -- a season high for the show and the best for Leno on a Wednesday in about two years. And over at CBS, "Late Show With David Letterman" drew 5.5 million viewers, also a season high. Both shows were up about 40% over their previous season average.

I don't know if that's a reflection on Mike Huckabee vs. Robin Williams. We'll have to see last night's numbers.

Jay should quit the union. What does he benefit by being a member?

BackInTex wrote:Jay should quit the union. What does he benefit by being a member?

Because he's not a producer of his show (he should be!), he'd not be able to work with his writers.

Leno is in an awkward situation. A number of shows like Lost are produced by people who also serve as writers and they could easily have figured out ways to finagle scripts through. They haven't done so because they support the writers. Leno is really caught in the middle and he's probably trying to work through it as best he can.

It's all going to boil down to how well the networks do with their cobbled together schedules. The early results have not been promising. The new reality shows are getting thumped in the ratings by CSI reruns and the return of Law and Order (Celebrity Apprentice did fairly well). The other problem the networks have is that many of the "new" scripted shows they will be introducing, like Sunday's Cashmere Mafia, weren't on the fall schedules because they were lousy shows.

Sounds like the late night ratings got much tighter Thursday night, despite CBS airing all reruns for a lead in, and NBC running all new shows. This is getting interesting...
I see Dave will have folks like Tom Hanks and Morgan Freeman next week. Will Jay just counter with NBC regulars and pet segments? How soon will Conan schedule Al Roker--his last minute fill-in guest?