Despite the ongoing writers' strike, nearly all late-night TV are returning within the first couple of weeks of January. Leno and Conan come back to air on Jan. 2nd without their writers, since the studios have already or will lay off the non-writing staff of those shows if they do not. Conan's already made comments about how the show won't be as good without writers.

The Daily Show and Colbert Report are also returning without writers, but they will return the following week because they were scheduled for a 2-week break which would have had them resuming production on the 7th. The show formats may have to be changed because of the way WGA rules work...they can't use certain normally scripted segments like Colbert's "The Word."

And finally, Letterman is in a different boat than the other shows because his show and the following Craig Ferguson show are owned by his own production company, Worldwide Pants, rather than the network he runs on. For this reason he can negotiate a separate deal with the WGA, and will likely return to air with his writers, most likely in the same timeframe as the other late-night shows. While Jon Stewart's production company produces The Colbert Report, I think the fact that Comedy Central finances it means that it wouldn't be able to do the same thing.

Though all of this means the return of late-night, the writers' strike is still on rocky ground, especially after the WGA filed a complaint with the Labor Board that the AMPTA was refusing to negotiate in good faith.