Daily Show and Colbert to Return

The Daily Show and Colbert Report will return, sans writers, on January 7. But there's a catch:

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.

I really miss those guys, and I understand why they want to come back on (especially insofar as the nonstriking staff has got to eat)—but I'd rather they stayed off the air entirely than cross the picket line with an inferior product.