As the strike world turns ... really ugly

The Writers Guild of America may have just shot itself not just in the foot, but into a deep vein from which the bleeding can’t be stanched. With every late-night talk show preparing to return to work come Jan. 2 save “Late Show with David Letterman” and “Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson,” which are offering interim agreements to which the WGA is, bizarrely enough, not responding, they’re forcing Letterman’s shows to return without writers, to present the same sort of inferior product as their competitors, and leading some to question the WGA’s good will, not to mention its strategy.

If Letterman and Ferguson can return with the WGA’s blessing, that’d bolster the writers’ cause and underscore the need for the sort of union-approved material required to appropriately amuse somnolent Americans, as viewers could compare/contrast the quality of Letterman’s writer-sanctioned show vs. Leno’s expected foundering.

On the other hand, if Dave, who has clearly thrown in with the writers, is forced to muddle through with the same sort of half-assed, writerless shows that his competition will muster, then clearly no one wins.

Meanwhile, it looks as though the Directors Guild of America, flummoxed by the WGA’s klutzy efforts at engaging AMPTP, may try to play through and reach some sort of agreement as early as next month.

In the past, the WGA has assailed the trades (such as Variety, whose story is linked above) as being in the pockets of the producers, albeit with precious little evidence with which to back such claims. This latest report does seem particularly anti-WGA, but, then, there’s not much happening these days to encourage a whole-hearted championing of WGA strategy. Particularly since at this point there seems to be no WGA strategy outside of: Let’s p!ss Everyone off.