The late night hosts team up to give the book a public face with Strike Force Five

CNN
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Bill Maher prides himself on his ability to break with what he considers conventional wisdom. When the host spoke about him Random Club Podcast. Over the weekend, over the ongoing strike impasse in Hollywood — where he called some of the Writers Guild’s demands “weird” and claimed that some “think you owe it to yourself to make a living as a writer, and you’re not” — he again blatantly separated himself from his union. Late night contemporaries.

In fact, Maher’s brothers in stand-up comedy (it’s really a boys’ club at the moment) have united to support their fellow writers and staff, with… Stephen Colbert“Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and John Oliver team up for their own podcast,”Fifth Strike ForceIn doing so, the comedians, who strongly sympathized with the striking writers, gave a public face to a union that had traditionally lacked the kind of power and star power when trying to garner public sympathy for its cause.

This point of differentiation from actors became clear when the Screen Actors Guild joined the labor battle in July, with its president, Fran Drescher, The former star of “The Nanny” explains the unfairness of the current contract. Drescher’s press conference received far more media attention than anything WGA leaders mustered during their two months of strike action alone.

“A simple message, delivered dramatically, from a face most people know,” Matt Bellone of Puck News chirp on time. “That’s why an actors’ strike is so dangerous for studios.”

Writers have often stood at the forefront of the push for fairness and concessions from the major studios, known as the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, or AMPTP (of which Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s parent company, is a member). However, the public display of camaraderie between the late-night gang marks a departure from previous hits, most recently in 2008, when there was little love lost between David Letterman and Jay Leno, who headlined two of the most… Local news is popular after watching the late news. Options.

Hosts of “Strike Force Five” which debuted at the top Spotify And apples This week, the podcast charts are using proceeds from the show to raise money for workers on their shows affected by the strike — not just the writers, as Kimmel pointed out on the podcast, but “everyone who works on a TV show and is out of a job right now.”

While it’s not unusual for performers to express solidarity with their writers, the late-night dynamic is unusual, since the comedians who host these shows not only co-write their own material, but serve as cast members , like anyone who watched the Emmy show. I will mention the presentation of this class. Writers also regularly appears in comedy bits on shows. (Even Maher noted on his podcast this week that he wrote for his show and expressed his appreciation for his book, before mocking the concerns of some of those marching on the picket lines alongside them.)

The sad irony is that late-night viewing ratings were already declining before the strike, amid shifts in TV viewing patterns driven in part by streaming. Trevor Noah and James Corden They quit their shows last year, shrinking the roster of top talent.

A multi-month strike will likely not help in terms of further eroding people’s already strained habit of watching these shows daily, and will very likely exacerbate the problem.

For now, Colbert, Fallon, Kimmel, Myers and Oliver are still getting a fair amount of attention, and thanks to Colbert (whom Kimmel credited for suggesting the “Strike Force” collaboration), they’re using it.

In the first episode, the hosts also expressed their shared hope that the strikes will end soon, with Colbert noting that people keep asking him how he’s enjoying his extended “vacation.”

“It’s like a vacation in the same way that a colonoscopy is like a nap,” he said.