Writers' Strike Ends for Letterman, but Not Leno

It's a tale of two talk shows. David Letterman and Jay Leno have been broadcasting repeats for weeks because of the writers strike. But that's about to change. Both Letterman and Leno are due to come back with new shows for the New Year.

Letterman will have his writers with him. But right now, Leno will not.

That's because a new agreement has just been reached, ending the writers strike with Letterman's company, Worldwide Pants. A Writers Guild statement says the agreement "will allow Late Show with David Letterman and The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson to return to the air with their full writing staffs." (Both are part of Worldwide Pants.)

The Writers Guild says the agreement with Letterman "addresses the issues important to writers, particularly New Media," for example, how writers will be paid when their work is shown online.

While the strike is over for Letterman, it continues with Leno's Tonight Show.

A blog linked to the Writers guild website says Leno and some others have been supporters of the strike, "digging into their own pockets to pay their non-writing crews" as they've stayed off the air.

But the blog says, unlike Letterman, who has Worldwide Pants, Leno has to wait until there's a strike deal with NBC. The Guild claims Leno and other hosts are "effectively hostage to the position of their employers" as the writers strike continues.

The Guild wants "NBC-Universal to step up to the plate and negotiate a company-wide deal."

Despite the strike, NBC is going full-steam ahead with new talk shows, making announcements that Leno and Conan O'Brien will be "All New" on January 2^nd. Without writers, it's assumed they'll dedicate more time to interviews.

The Writers Guild plans to picket outside the NBC studios in Burbank, starting again on the second. They're hoping that Leno's guests won't want to cross the line.

In the meantime, the writers' strike doesn't seem to be close to ending. This is what the Writers Guild said Friday, "Big media walked away from the table and refuses to negotiate."

This is what the Alliance of Motion Picture And Television Producers website says about the writers' strike: the Writers guild "has continued to press a series of unreasonable demands that have nothing to do with new media and the real concerns of most working writers." It also says the deal ending the strike with Worldwide Pants is a joke.