This isn’t a sports blog, but more and more this writers strike is reminding me of the time in the late 80s when the National Football League went on strike. Faced with the possibility of no football games on Sunday, and millions of dollars in lost revenue, the franchise owners came up with the one of the worst ideas in history. They went out and got “replacement players” to fill the uniforms of the Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants, causing legendary football fields with construction workers, truck drivers and bartenders. The level of play resembled schoolyard pick-up games, attendance was miserable and it caused fans to rally around the players even more. Twenty years later, NBC is considering a similar strategy, and I’m sure it will lead to the same disastrous results.
According to Variety, NBC is toying with the idea of having substitute host take over for Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien, who have been supporting the writers during the week-long strike. Part of this decision is being made because many of the late night shows have said they will fire their non-writing staff if the shows were no longer in production. So even if Jay isn’t behind the desk, many of the non-WGA staff would still be able to work. In a statement, Tonight Show executive producer Debbie Vickers said, “All sorts of things are being discussed, including guest hosts. Our preference is that we return to production of 'The Tonight Show' with Jay as host as soon as possible. We want to protect the staff, who have been loyal to this show for decades, in the same way that Johnny Carson reluctantly returned without his writers in 1988.”
But those Carson show were not considered Johnny’s finest hour. To fill the normal monologue time, Johnny and Ed McMahon would show slides from their family vacations. David Letterman, who was hosting Late Night at the time, would spend most of his pre-interview segments complaining about how much he missed the writers. And even if guest hosts are being considered, most of the people that would be considered for the job are in the WGA, or might not want to incur the wrath of the organization when they do come back on the job. Also, since the late-night shows were more mostly interview segments, actors with projects to push might not want to cross the line of angry writers outside the studio, just to plug a movie.
Now here’s the question: If the talk-show scene becomes a sea of re-runs right up to Thanksgiving, who will be the 1st to blink? Variety reports that Jimmy Kimmel and David Letterman are considering coming back without writers, to take advantage of the void in original programming. Dave would be the one with the most to gain, since he could steal the audience who is tired of seeing Jay talk about month-old news. But without writers, would Late Show be a show even worth checking out? And wouldn’t it just fuel the writers’ argument about how important they are to the process of making a network successful and profitable?
So networks, take a lesson from the NFL strike. People love their football, but when you have pretenders filling the shows of pros, you may end up doing more harm than good.
