Stewart and Colbert Return to Late Night, Sans Strike Beards

Last night Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert returned to their fake news desks, with picket lines outside of their studios and no strike beards in sight (however, a strike unibrow did appear). They were supportive as ever of the WGA though, in fact Stewart spent all 30 minutes discussing the strike, with only a lone joke or two about the primaries ("Cold white people have had their say"). He made it clear that "From now on, until the end of the strike, we'll be doing 'A Daily Show with Jon Stewart.' But not 'THE Daily Show.'"

Colbert played up his on-air right-wing persona, denouncing Unions and then wondering where his word for the feature "today's WORD" went. Prompter-less, he pulled off the entire half hour riffing, as Stewart before him had done...though he touched on topics other than the strike. Below (and after the jump) are clips from both shows. How do you think they did? The NY Post says both hosts bombed (something the WGA wants so that Comedy Central and Viacom will see how much they need their writers).

An update on the other New York late night hosts that returned last week: after saying that he had "to say goodbye to an old friend tonight, and I'm just sick about it," Letterman shaved his strike beard! As for Conan, his beard is still growing strong, and last night local fave Nicole Atkins showed no solidarity with the WGA by crossing the picket line to appear on his show!

Some good news, we received the following statement from the WGA yesterday: "United Artists signed an independent agreement. This agreement is virtually identical to the agreement signed by David Letterman's Worldwide Pants. It features all the proposals we were preparing to make when the big media conglomerates left the bargaining table a month ago. Those proposals include appropriate minimums and residuals for new media (whether streamed or downloaded, as well as original made-for content), along with basic cable and pay-TV increases, feature animation and reality TV coverage, union solidarity language, and important enforcement, auditing, and arbitration considerations."