Then:

Now:

Today was the last day for most of the 120 staffers on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” who left with an early Christmas bonus check and no guarantee of a job when the strike ended…

“We haven’t heard from [Leno] since the second or third day of the strike,” said a former Leno staffer. “He called on speakerphone while we were in our daily meeting and said, ‘Don’t look for other jobs, no one’s going to lose their house, we’ll get though this…’”

Still on the payroll are the exec producers and a skeleton crew to answer phones. Leno was not on hand for the layoffs. Instead, Leno’s assistant notified the staff yesterday that they would get their Christmas bonus early. Leno’s bonuses usually go out the week before Christmas.

“People are devastated today because we thought that he meant something more than an early Christmas bonus,” another said. “A lot of people didn’t look for other work, based on Jay’s assurances.”

And how about that, they dropped the axe late on a Friday afternoon on the East Coast. You think they’ve been planning it all week, if not longer? Nahhhhh!

In Leno’s defense, I don’t think he meant to screw over his own people all along. He’s just so conflict-averse that he thought he was doing a good thing by reassuring them and counting on the best to happen. Nice-guy Jay. But now he’s nowhere to be seen. Guess he figures the reporters won’t be so friendly this time.

Update: Conan’s staff just got laid off too, but one of them got to stick around long enough to blog about it. Announcing your own firing on the official blog, that’s gotta be a first. The unofficial Late Night blog will be interesting to watch…