After a five-month hiatus, most late-night shows will return with new episodes next week following the resolution of the 148-day writers’ strike, hosts announced on social media Wednesday morning.
The late-night shows hosted by Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers will return to air on Monday, hosts said. John Oliver will return to his HBO show “Last Week Tonight” on Sunday.
The late-night shows were the first casualties of the writers’ strike, and they’ve been dire since early May. The Writers Guild of America, the union that represents more than 11,000 writers, reached a tentative agreement with major entertainment studios Sunday evening. Writers Guild board members approved the deal Tuesday and announced the strike would end early Wednesday morning.
In recent weeks, the five late-night hosts launched a podcast called “Strike Force Five” and donated all proceeds to unemployed employees on their shows.
“This is the cancellation of Strike Force 5 and the resumption of Late Night 5,” the hosts said in their statement Social media message.
With tens of thousands of actors still on strike, late-night and daytime talk shows are among the only television genres that can resume production. Most other scripted television and film productions will remain on hold until the actors’ strike is resolved.
Other talk shows, including those hosted by Bill Maher and Drew Barrymore, are also expected to return soon – just weeks after those two hosts reversed their decision to go back on the air, even though their own writers are still picketing.
On Sept. 13, Mr. Maher announced the return of his weekly HBO show “Real Time With Bill Maher” without writers, but reversed the decision a week later. Ms. Barrymore suspended the planned revival of her talk show “The Drew Barrymore Show” the day before it was due to air due to intense backlash on social media. She was also removed as host of the National Book Awards. “The Jennifer Hudson Show” and “The Talk” also canceled previously announced plans to air new episodes.
NBC’s late-night star “Saturday Night Live” is also expected to return sometime in October, according to a person briefed on the plans who spoke on condition of anonymity because no announcement had been made.
Some daytime talk shows, including “The View” and “Live With Kelly and Mark,” continued to record new episodes during the strike.
It’s not yet clear what kind of guests the talk shows will be able to book if actors continue to strike. The actors’ union SAG-AFTRA has banned its members from promoting the work of the studios they are striking against.
The five-month break is unusual for late night. In the early stages of the pandemic, most talk shows returned within weeks, albeit with virtual shows. During the 2007 writers’ strike, which lasted 100 days, late-night show hosts stayed away for two months before gradually returning despite ongoing strikes.
The question of how large the audience will be for new episodes of late-night talk shows is also an open question. As more viewers have turned away from traditional network television in favor of streaming in recent years, ratings for late-night shows have plummeted. During the strikes, viewership fell even more sharply.
“Four of the five late-night frontrunners saw double-digit declines in reach during the late off-peak time slot, with some losing up to 50 percent of their audience during those hours,” said Ashwin Navin, the managing director of Samba TV, a research group. “It remains to be seen how Late Night will return to its former relevance.”