Late night television was the first domino to fall after the WGA strike began on May 2. The full slate for late night TV – except for Bravo’s Watch what’s happening live and Fox News Gutfeld – Darkness gone. The uncertainty about the future of these offers raised questions about the fate of non-striking employees: Will they continue to be paid for the duration of the strike? Will their health benefits cease to exist? Will the networks try to use their financial situation as leverage to try to pressure the hosts back into business? In the long run, these questions remain, but on May 3, it was reported that my staff The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon And Late Night with Seth Meyers You will get a bit of a cushion to snuggle up to at the moment. Both productions’ employees would continue to be paid for at least three weeks of hiatus, with two weeks of payoffs being funded by NBC and an additional week of compensation being covered by Fallon and Myers themselves. Their Medicare coverage has also been extended through September.
The move mirrors what was taken by late-night hosts during the last writers’ strike in 2007-2008, when Conan O’Brien, Jay Leno, David Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel stepped to the plate to pay their crews during their shows. It was far from the air. Late-night hosts likewise paid their staff out of pocket when their productions were shut down due to the pandemic in 2020. Both Myers and Fallon have expressed support for their writers publicly, with Myers calling their demands “very reasonable” and Fallon saying “They got a fair deal.”