The Conical Glass: I miss you, Jon and Stephen

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

I miss you, Jon and Stephen

One of the things we bought for the new house is a brand-new TV for the bedroom. I've been anti-TV-in-bedroom, but the new place has a built-in TV cabinet so you can close the doors when you're not watching it. The whole concept of the bedroom TV was so we could put on our jammies and watch "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" before going to sleep. Cozy! We even bought another high-def TV (smaller by far than the monolith), because, who knows, maybe someday Comedy Central will start broadcasting in HD, and it's best to be prepared for that eventuality.

Except we haven't gotten any use out of the TV yet, because of the writers' strike. The cabinet doors remain tightly closed. The last strike, in the late 1980s, lasted for several months; David Letterman, my late night personality of choice at the time, eventually came back without his writers, and relied on features like "Hal Gurnee's Network Time Killers." He could probably do something similar again. I can't imagine Stewart or Colbert going back on the air without their writers, however, since both shows are extremely dependent on their writing staffs. I love watching Jon interview authors and thinkers like Fareed Zakaria or Neil deGrasse Tyson, but c'mon, no one wants three segments of that. And where would Stephen be without the cleverly-scripted "Word" or "Threatdown"?

I'm not always pro-union, but in this case, I think the writers have a point -- they should get a cut of the profits from new media, which could one day be immense. Without writers, all we are left with is a turned-off TV.

posted by 125records @ 11:14 PM

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