Comedy Central has just announced the January return of its two late-night talk show hosts.  Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert will ring in their new years on January 7th, five days after Kimmel, Leno and O’Brien have scheduled their starts.  The Daily Show and The Colbert Report - like the ABC and NBC programs - will resume production sans writers.  What this means for these ‘news’ shows and their largely scripted formats is unknown.

Stewart and Colbert, who are also members of the Writers Guild of America, released a joint statement about the decision:

’‘We would like to return to work with our writers. If we cannot, we would like to express our ambivalence, but without our writers we are unable to express something as nuanced as ambivalence.’‘

Meanwhile, we may get details later today about the plans for CBS’ late-night programs.  David Letterman’s company, Worldwide Pants, will be meeting with members of the WGA today.  If they can reach an interim agreement, both The Late Show With David Letterman and The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson could also be hitting the airwaves - with scribes - come January 2nd.

No matter how you feel about the writers’ situation, what do you think about The Daily Show and The Colbert Report returning?  Could they possibly be as good as they were pre-strike—or do you think the quality will suffer?  Will you simply be happy to see them back regardless of the content?