Letterman owned his production company and negotiated an interim contract with WGA so his writers could continue to work.
Conan, Stewart, & Colbert had their hands forced by their networks threatening to fire their staff if they didn’t return. Those three paid their staff out of pocket during the time worked during the strike. Conversely, Leno told his staff they were guaranteed the money, then NBC laid off 80 of them without pay and as far as I can tell, he didn’t pay those folks and some of them weren’t scheduled to return after the strike was over.
There was also a writers strike in 1988 where Letterman and Carson got permission from WGA to continue without writers.
All of this stuff made the news, but maybe it just wasn’t of interest to you in those days.
acutfjg@feddit.nl 9 months ago
I don’t know enough about the circumstances, but wasn’t Conan doing his show, poorly, and without content, specifically to show that writers are needed.
Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Conan (and I think all of the talk show hosts?) were contractually required to put on their shows and had approval from the WGA. Conan chose to actively put on a bad show to highlight the strike and, if memory serves, Letterman outright had union leaders do “bits” to further raise awareness.
In all honesty: Barrymore seems like an idiot and likely thought she had her “Conan moment” before it was explained that “no, this is not happening and we specifically negotiated contracts to not make hosts required to host during a strike because of the last time this happened”
And, in her defense, not all the hosts were supportive of the strike when they came back in '08.
nova_ad_vitum@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
They were bad in that they were unscripted. If they hadn’t done them the crews wouldn’t have been paid either.
That said, on Conan there was one of those episodes where his staff are playing guitar hero and Conan walks in there with a real guitar and plays the same song on a real guitar at the same time. I have never seen one activity so thoroughly undermine another.
Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Conan is one of the all time great comedic writers. Even his “unscripted” is st ill “written” by one of the GOATs.
Everyone rightfully gives Leno shit for basically putting on a “normal” show. But Conan knew what he was doing and struck a balance between “tedious”, “intentionally bad”, and “still entertaining enough to get renewed when this all blows over”
cantstopthesignal@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Maybe the show isn’t doing well and this is a way to bow out gracefully.
GraniteM@lemmy.world 9 months ago
He was deliberately doing bizarre unwritten bits and highlighting the fact that he had no writers. Now, I think that it might have been some of the best material he’s ever done, some real weird experimental avant garde late night talk show comedy with him crawling around in his rafters and seeing how long he could keep his wedding ring spinning. But he never pretended that everything was normal or let us forget that he was on the side of the writers.
MonkCanatella@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
I’ve liked Conan since I was like 12 years old, but I really doubt that. He’s definitely not been super vocal in any memorable way in terms of solidarity
acutfjg@feddit.nl 9 months ago
I mean it’s a something constantly brought up about him during the 2008 writers strike
steakmeout@aussie.zone 9 months ago
Why would you lie about something that is easily disproved?
MonkCanatella@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
I’ve never heard him say anything about unions/solidarity really anything like that. I think he tries really hard not to get political