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Letterman’s ‘Worldwide Pants’ Hopes to Deal with WGA

Most late night shows are planning to return to the airwaves despite the writers strike that is threatening to drag on well into the New Year.

David Letterman’s production company, Worldwide Pants, plans to seek an interim deal with the Writers Guild of America; the industry will be watching closely to see how the deal reflects the guild’s most recent offer to the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, writes The Wall Street Journal.

The deal would allow Letterman and the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson to return to the air with their writing staffs.

The union told its members over the weekend that it planned to attempt to ink deals with individual production companies. Worldwide Pants jumped at the offer, and CBS - which said it respected the production company’s desire to do so - pointed out that the move should not “confuse the fact that CBS remains unified with the [Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers] and committed to working with the member companies to reach a fair and reasonable agreement with the WGA,” the Los Angeles Times reports.

As of yesterday, however, the guild had not responded to Worldwide Pants’ request to begin separate negotiations. During the last writers strike, in 1988, popular programs such as The Cosby Show were produced independently of major studios, and the WGA offered independent contracts, with more than 100 production companies signing up. The move allowed some series to resume production earlier than other shows.

NBC is expected to announce later this week that The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Night with Conan O’Brien will return without writers as early as Jan. 2, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report may return without writers by Jan. 7.

In the meantime, some of the networks are considering cancelling some of their costly production deals. The chance to obliterate deals that weren’t yielding hit shows - thanks to a “force majeure” clause that goes into effect six weeks into a labor action - was considered one appealing aspect of a prolonged strike.