Letterman's return guest: Robin Williams

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Robbie Williams

Letterman's return guest: Robin Williams

NEW YORK - Robin Williams will be David Letterman's first guest upon the return of his "Late Show" on CBS Wednesday. The appearance of a Hollywood A-lister who can talk a mile a minute may be Letterman's way of quickly trying to draw a distinction between his show and his late-night rivals, who are without writers and may also have trouble booking major entertainers as guests.

NBC's "Tonight" show said Monday that Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee will appear on Jay Leno's first show back Wednesday.

Letterman announced Friday that his production company, Worldwide Pants, had reached an agreement to have his show return with writers despite the continuing writers strike, which began Nov. 5. The deal also allows writers to return to Craig Ferguson's late-night show, also owned by Worldwide Pants.

The late-night shows hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and Conan O'Brien are also returning Wednesday but have said little about who will be appearing.

Production company Worldwide Pants and the Writers Guild of America forged an agreement Friday that will put The Late Show With David Letterman and The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson back on the air with their writing staffs. Worldwide Pants owns both programs.

"Worldwide Pants has always been a writer-friendly company, and from the beginning we never had any real trouble with what the writers were asking," Worldwide Pants CEO Rob Burnett told The Hollywood Reporter on Friday. "We were able to give them pretty much what they wanted."

Just what they wanted is subject to interpretation. Burnett referred questions of the specifics of the deal to the WGA but said the production company was willing to give the WGA everything that it could.

"The bottom line is that as a signatory of the guild, Worldwide Pants is responsible for paying writers' residuals on everything," Burnett said. That included Internet rights, though CBS said in a separate statement that the network controls the Internet exploitation rights for both programs "and will comply with any eventual negotiated agreement between the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and the WGA."

Hollywood writers have been on strike since early November.

The WGA said in a letter to its members that Worldwide Pants had agreed to the full slate including new-media proposals that the AMPTP had been unwilling to approve.

"This demonstrates the integrity and affordability of our proposals," wrote WGA East president Michael Winship and WGA West president Patric Verrone. "There are no shortcuts in this deal."