Stephen Colbert, Jay Leno and friends will return to their late-night pulpits nearly naked, in the show business sense. Going on air next week while a Hollywood writers strike still rages means they’ll have no scripts, can’t rely on favorite gimmicks previously created by their writers or the obligatory opening monologue with scrupulously planned punchlines.
    
So what can they say? Maybe losing their scripts will herald a new era of creativity, or at least a risky experiment in improv by comedy’s biggest names. 
    
Ideas out there include free-flowing, unscripted monologues, more “banter” with the band leader, putting audience members on the spot, longer celebrity interviews and asking silly questions of pedestrians outside the studio.

So far, it seems, the usual celebrity circuit of interview subjects isn’t biting.

(WSJ) (Washington Post)

Keep an eye on:

• Hollywood’s glamour machine is stuck between a promise that the stars will still show up at next month’s Golden Globes and a threat that 3,000 picketing writers will chase them away. (NYTimes)
• Publisher HarperCollins, which just received the manuscript for Benazir Bhutto’s upcoming book, is now moving quickly to get it on the shelves by February following yesterday’s assassination of the former Pakistani prime minister. (NYPost)    
• Wal-Mart Stores quietly canceled its online video download service less than a year after the site went live. (Reuters)
• Search giant Google is blasted for its opt-out sharing feature in Google Reader, much like Facebook was criticized for its Beacon ad service. (CNET)

(Photo: Reuters)