I am – Hercules!!

New episodes of “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report” will return to Comedy Central Jan. 7 without writers.

How’s that going to work??

From Friday morning’s Variety:

According to insiders, trademark features like Stewart's "Headlines" and Colbert's "The Word" will obviously have to take a break since they're heavily scripted.

Instead, it appears the shows will try to work around the missing writers (and the guild rules that bar anything that's traditionally the domain of scribes) by relying heavily on pretaped segments from the field.

In many of those cases, the segments are produced and edited by non-WGA members. That would still seemingly prevent correspondents who are WGA members from participating, but it's believed that some of the show's contributors are with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, rather than the WGA. (In addition, "The Daily Show" has occasionally run pieces by individuals who are not regular contributors.)

They will follow “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” and “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno,” all of which return Jan. 2 sans writers.

Worldwide Pants is also expected to bring back “The Late Show With David Letterman” and “The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson” Jan. 2. Pants reps meet with WGA today on the matter of bringing the shows' writing staffs back for the return.

Read all of Variety’s story on the Comedy Central matter here.

by Steve Martin