Jon Stewart in a somber moment renamed his show "A Daily Show," saying that it's not "The Daily Show" without his writers. Stewart mentioned during an interview on the show that his production company had talked Viacom, the studio conglomerate that owns Comedy Central, into asking for an agreement similar to David Letterman's, but was turned down by the writer's guild. The WGA says that the comparison between Worldwide Pants' agreement and the proposed agreements were unfair because of the difference in ownership. Mona Mangan, executive director of the WGA-E told the New York Times in an interview: "If Comedy Central wanted to come to us and sign the deal for the whole network, we were willing to do that."

Stephen Colbert opened his show as he normally does with a preview and swooping camera angles on himself, but only his part of the opening which included only the words: "Tonight! <silence> Then! <silence> Plus! <silence> Hey! <silence> This is the Colbert  (pronouncing the T) Report." Colbert remained in character throughout, with only one mention of the writer's strike. He had multiple cameras pan onto each other to show an empty teleprompter to prove that there was no script for the show. He did tell the audience before the taping that: "I just want to say before we begin, `I love my writers. I think they're great. I can't wait for them to come back.'"