• Broadcasting & Cable, Monday, November 12, 2007 10:45 AM

NBC has told much of the staff of "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" that they will be gone at the end of next week, following the program's writers' strike-induced shutdown. Leno refuses to cross the picket line, although the show may be back on the air Nov. 19 with guest hosts.

"All sorts of things are being discussed, including guest hosts," says "Tonight Show" executive producer Debbie Vickers. "Our preference is that we return to production with Jay as host as soon as possible." The same timetable has been given to workers at NBC's "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," but Vickers says she wants to save the jobs of her non writing staffers.

"We want to protect the staff, who have been loyal to this show for decades, in the same way that Johnny Carson reluctantly returned without his writers in 1988," she says. Late-night shows have been in repeats for a week as hosts walked out in solidarity. Leno's chief writer doesn't expect his boss back anytime soon. Said Tonight Show head writer Joe Medeiros, who is also a strike captain for the Writers Guild of America: "They are looking at guest hosts as one possibility so all those people don't have to lose their jobs."

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