David Letterman has made the decision to pay his striking writers and all the rest of his staff through the end of the year. That money, in addition to the $100,000 he loses every night he doesn’t tape his show, the Late Show with David Letterman, is coming out of his own pocket. That’s quite a commitment. Some reports say that he plans to pay them through the duration of the strike, but that hasn’t been confirmed.

Evidently, this isn’t something new for Letterman. He did the same thing in the 1988 writer’s strike. One of Letterman’s friends said, “Dave’s not doing this to get good press, which is why it hasn’t been reported for almost two days.”