Times TV critic on Carson’s return -- sans writers
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Carson Daly returned to the air Monday night -- early Tuesday morning, actually -- without his writers, who are, of course, on strike. He is the first and will possibly be the only late-night talk show to go back on the air before the opposing parties shake hands, and his stated reason is the same offered by Ellen DeGeneres, who earlier recommenced her afternoon show: He is doing it for his (nonwriting) staff, who otherwise would be laid off.
It may be a convenient argument -- I can’t know whether it’s disingenuous -- but it’s not wholly without merit, and in any event, it’s true. To be sure, fellow late-night hosts David Letterman, Conan O’Brien, Jay Leno and Jimmy Kimmel have for the moment avoided that choice by paying their idle hands out of their own pockets. (Letterman is doing the same on behalf of Craig Ferguson, whose show his company produces.) But there is a chance their largesse will end before the strike does.
Strictly speaking, ‘Last Call With Carson Daly’ is post-late-night -- the other networks have all clocked off by then. (The CBS and ABC affiliates run repeats of their 11 o’clock news at that hour.) Only 30 minutes long, the show is a small, marginal thing, and, whatever the symbolic import of Daly’s return, it will have no more real effect on the strike than his show has had on the culture at large.
Robert Lloyd, Times Television Critic