NOVEMBER 27--NBC late night host Carson Daly, who today announced that he is returning to the air in the face of the ongoing writers strike, wants his friends and family to help with his scab efforts.

In an e-mail, Daly asked a small group of contacts to call in 'suggested jokes' to a telephone hotline, noting that he would 'play some, most, or all of your jokes on the air.' The bit, Daly stressed, was not meant to 'make fun' of his striking writers. He added that his goal was to just 'play a fun collage of random people trying to 'help me out.''

The bit's set-up, Daly wrote in his Sunday night e-mail (a copy of which you'll find here) was that 'the devastating writers strike' led to 'A TON of my friends and family...calling me, leaving messages, offering their help with jokes because they know that I don't have any writers working and hosting a latenight show without them will be nearly impossible for me.' At the bottom of his note, Daly included brief messages to some of his associates seeking jokes from some of their 'celeb friends,' golfing pals, or 'random peeps.'

As of this writing, Carson's Joke Hotline is open for submissions. We've fogged out Daly's AOL address as well as the names and addresses of the e-mail's recipients, which included Daly's mother, father, sister, the executive producer of 'Last Call with Carson Daly,' and the performer's New York doctor.

Scott London, a Daly pal who got the e-mail, told TSG that he would gladly submit a joke to the hotline, adding that the performer's gambit was not a bid to draft friends into a strikebreaking effort. (1 page)