What we know about the impending return of late-night talk shows

Late-night talk shows may return to TV as soon as October.

That’s according to a report from Variety, detailing how late-night shows may be the first shows to return as “producers are already plotting a return to air within the next two to three weeks.”

Late-night talk show hosts like Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert and John Oliver are “under SAG-AFTRA’s network code deal, which isn’t a part of the talent guild’s current strike,” per Variety. This means that as soon as the writers strike ends, late-night shows can come back, too.

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Those five hosts decided to team up for a podcast called “Strike Force Five” during the strike, with all of the show’s proceeds going to their respective staffs, per NPR.

The news that talk shows will be able to return to air soon comes after some controversy surrounding daytime talk shows like “The Drew Barrymore Show,” “Real Time with Bill Maher” and “The View.”

While Drew Barrymore planned for her show to resume production during the writers strike, she reversed the decision after receiving criticism. Barrymore made an apology and said, “I have listened to everyone, and I am making the decision to pause the show’s premiere until the strike is over.”

Before Barrymore decided to pause her show, she said a couple of the reasons she wanted the show to come back is because “there are other people’s jobs on the line” and she has wanted to make “a show that was there for people in sensitive times.”

“I weighed the scales and I thought, if we could go on during a global pandemic, and everything that the world has experienced through 2020, why would this sideline us?” she said in a since-deleted video.

Bill Maher also planned for his show to return and then reversed the decision.

Maher said last week “there was no end in sight” to the writers strike and announced his show would return, per The New York Times.

“I’m not prepared to lose an entire year and see so many below-the-line people suffer so much,” Maher said, per the Times. He reversed his decision when the writers guild and the studios (represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers) started negotiations again.

“The View” continued to air shows during the writers strike, with host Whoopi Goldberg saying the show was following strike rules, since they were not using WGA members to produce the show, per Deadline.

Demonstrators picketed outside the studio as “The View” was taped on Friday, per Deadline.