Late Night Hosts to Return, some must improvise - NYT

Writers Guild - Strike - Late Night Hosts - David Letterman - Walter H.G. Lewin - TV - New York Times: "For most of television’s late-night hosts, sidelined for two months by the strike by the Writers Guild of America, this week will be a leap into the unknown. The two biggest questions they face when most of them return to the screen on Wednesday night are: How are they going to be funny without writers? And who is going to sit on their couches as guests?

The writing situation seems to leave only one option for hosts: Be funny on their own. The booking situation is so unsettled that no show still affected by the strike is going public with its list of guests this week, and a physics professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is being hotly pursued as a booking.

...The main event was the deal that David Letterman secured Friday allowing him and his CBS colleague Craig Ferguson to return to the air with writers."