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Let\u2019s get one thing straight up front: Of all the people affected by the strikes in Hollywood, you do not need to pity the talk-show hosts. They are well-known, well-paid people who will, as a rule, be fine.<\/p>\n
But this is definitely a fraught time to be hosting a talk show \u2014 or, if you\u2019re Jimmy Fallon<\/a>, even not<\/em> to be hosting one.<\/p>\n The pillory for hosts restarting production in defiance of their writers\u2019 picket lines is getting crowded. The latest addition, Bill Maher, tried to cushion the announcement<\/a> that his HBO talk show, \u201cReal Time,\u201d was returning to the air with lavish praise of his striking staffers.<\/p>\n \u201cThe show I will be doing without my writers will not be as good as our normal show, full stop,\u201d he said. \u201cI love my writers, I am one of them, but I am not prepared to lose an entire year and see so many below-the-line people suffer so much.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Nice words, but a little hard to take at face value given that Maher recently said on his podcast<\/a> that the strikers were making \u201ckooky\u201d demands of the studios and that they seemed to \u201cbelieve that you\u2019re owed a living as a writer.\u201d The Writers Guild of America announced a picket of \u201cReal Time\u201d; the commentator Keith Olbermann called<\/a> Maher a \u201cscumbag.\u201d On Monday, Maher announced<\/a> that he would \u201cdelay the return of \u2018Real Time,\u2019 for now.\u201d<\/p>\n Among daytime talk shows, \u201cThe View\u201d returned to air over the W.G.A.\u2019s protests. (The actors are on strike too, although in one of many complications<\/a> affecting the daytime shows, the Screen Actors Guild does not consider hosting to be a violation of their strike.) \u201cThe Talk\u201d and \u201cThe Jennifer Hudson Show\u201d both announced their returns, then reversed their plans shortly before their premiere dates.<\/p>\n Drew Barrymore got the most public blowback<\/a> \u2014 including from the National Book Awards, which disinvited her as host<\/a> \u2014 for announcing her daytime show\u2019s resumption. On Sunday, she reversed course<\/a>, saying that she had \u201clistened to everyone\u201d and was \u201cmaking the decision to pause the premiere until the strike is over.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n There was once a time when a host who had returned without writers in the midst of a strike, citing concern for the rest of the show\u2019s staff, could be forgiven, even treated like a folk hero. That time was (checks calendar) May.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n That was when, around the beginning of the current writers\u2019 strike, posters on social media circulated clips<\/a> from Conan O\u2019Brien\u2019s return to NBC\u2019s \u201cLate Night\u201d during the 2007-08 writers\u2019 strike, when he vamped for time by spinning his wedding ring on his desktop and sang \u201cBlue Moon of Kentucky\u201d<\/a> in a cowboy hat. O\u2019Brien was called a \u201clegend\u201d for calling attention to how much he needed his writers \u2014 he did not make his solo labors look effortless \u2014 not to mention, digging into his own pocket<\/a> to pay around 75 staffers.<\/p>\n But as this year\u2019s strike went on, the guild and its vocal supporters made clear that any hosts restarting their shows during this walkout would not be showered with likes. The guild operated under different contract language in O\u2019Brien\u2019s time, and W.G.A. members have said<\/a> that something like his return to air would today be considered strikebreaking because airing the show inevitably involves creative work that constitutes writing.<\/p>\n The producers of today\u2019s returning talk shows, of course, disagree. I cannot adjudicate this dispute as a lawyer. I can say, as a writer, that physically writing down words is the easiest part of the job (even for a hunt-and-peck typist like me). Planning, shaping ideas, making notes, generating questions, coming up with original concepts \u2014 all of this is the work of writing, whether or not you consider it the act of writing.<\/p>\n Regardless, I don\u2019t think today\u2019s backlash is the result of contract wording or a philosophical shift on the nature of the scribe\u2019s craft. Support for unions across America is rising \u2014 a 2022 Gallup poll found it at its highest level since 1965<\/a> \u2014 which has translated into 72 percent of Americans siding with the writers<\/a> over the studios. And like every strong feeling today, this one gets amplified in social media, especially when there are famous faces like Maher\u2019s and Barrymore\u2019s to aim at.<\/p>\n The talk-show returns<\/a> of 2007-08 were not without controversy. Ellen DeGeneres<\/a> and Jay Leno<\/a> were criticized by the W.G.A. for doing monologues. (David Letterman returned to air with a full staff because his production company, Worldwide Pants, struck its own deal with the writers.) Even Jon Stewart, in the prime of his late-aughts iconhood, took some heat for \u201cscabbing.\u201d<\/a> But by and large, these hobbled strike episodes were seen as testaments to the need for writers, produced more in sorrow than defiance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Today, the expectations have changed. When Johnny Carson, who practiced a cool neutrality, returned without his writers<\/a> during the 1988 strike, he wasn\u2019t seen as a hypocrite contradicting his on-air principles. In the more opinionated late-night environment of 2023, when hosts have made political bona fides<\/a> part of their acts, their audiences are more likely to expect their walk to match their talk.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n So it\u2019s safer for them to do that talking through a podcast, as the sidelined hosts Fallon, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and John Oliver have done with \u201cStrike Force Five,\u201d starting in August. (Fox News\u2019s conservative late-night host Greg Gutfeld, who has a non-W.G.A. staff<\/a>, has stayed on the air through the strike, though I doubt he would have been in on the group chat regardless.)<\/p>\n In theory, the podcast sounds like the late-night equivalent of \u201cThe Avengers.\u201d In practice, it is more like \u201cComedians in Cars Getting Coffee,\u201d decaffeinated. It\u2019s an amiable, shapeless session of five peers busting chops, trading shop talk and occasionally reading sponsor ads like modern day Joe Franklins<\/a>.<\/p>\n But other than its mission statement \u2014 to raise money to support the hosts\u2019 out-of-work staffs \u2014 it is only rarely about the strike. In the third episode, Colbert surprises his co-hosts by having an A.I. simulator read ads in their voices. \u201cThis is why the Guild\u2019s got to hold the line, this is why S.A.G.\u2019s got to hold the line,\u201d he says. \u201cBecause we\u2019re all<\/a> going to be replaced by robots<\/a> by Christmas if we don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cStrike Force Five\u201d is a solution to a practical problem: to raise money for idled workers. But it\u2019s also a solution to a celebrity problem: to give its hosts a public presence and voice without their becoming the bad guys. The 2007-08 work stoppage had strike beards<\/a>; this one has a strike pod. (The latter, 15 years later, is as exclusively male as the former.)<\/p>\n After all, one danger of the strike to talk-show hosts is that it disrupts an illusion that their programs depend on: that the host is your friend, not somebody\u2019s boss.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Talk-show hosts are authorities whose job is to act as if they don\u2019t have authority; they play jokers or confidants or snarky outsiders throwing cream pies in the face of power. But even if they are hired and sometimes fired by networks, even if they vocally support the unions, they are nonetheless management.<\/p>\n This became uncomfortably clear with the recent Rolling Stone expos\u00e9<\/a> into conditions at Fallon\u2019s \u201cTonight Show,\u201d whose staffers described a \u201ctoxic workplace\u201d where miserable employees would use guest dressing rooms as \u201ccrying rooms.\u201d Fallon later apologized to his staff in a virtual meeting, joining DeGeneres<\/a> in the club of talk hosts with likable public personas and boss-from-hell reputations.<\/p>\n That particular hot topic has not yet come up on \u201cStrike Force Five,\u201d at least some of whose recent episodes were recorded<\/a> before the Rolling Stone article appeared. (In the meantime, we have learned that during the strike, Fallon considered reading \u201cMoby-Dick\u201d and \u201cgot into kebabs.\u201d) Granted, the subject might be awkward amid the hosts\u2019 marriage stories and tales of teleprompter screw-ups, but it would be worth acknowledging on a podcast meant to support late-night workers.<\/p>\n Talk shows, even the most issues-oriented, are on some level escapes. But at the moment, it\u2019s hard for them and their audiences to escape one essential truth: Your favorite show is somebody else\u2019s workplace.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n