BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- The 2007-08 TV season begins this week as the networks roll out their new fall series and debut new episodes of returning favorites.

Enjoy them while you can.

Signs point to the possibility of a strike, which would shutter production of all scripted TV programming if a new contract can't be reached between the studios and the Writers Guild of America, West, over the next month. The current pact expires Oct. 31, and negotiations resumed this week.

If you think there are too many reality shows on TV now, brace yourself if a strike occurs.

While NBC Entertainment and Universal Media Studios Co-chairman Marc Graboff vowed to reporters during July's press tours that his company is "committed to providing quality entertainment programming" if there is a walkout, viewers probably will see more reality series.

Last month, Daily Variety reported network executives have also had conversations with foreign suppliers, mostly in England and Canada, about importing shows for American prime-time.

Network executives won't talk much about their strike preparation plans, preferring to paint a hopeful picture.

"Nobody wants a strike," said Nina Tassler, CBS Entertainment president. "We have such respect and admiration for the creative community. We only want to nurture and protect and take care of it."

TV writers want more than nurturing. They want additional residuals from DVD releases as well as compensation for their work when it is used online.

John Bowman, chairman of the WGA negotiating committee, said in July that 20 percent to 50 percent of a writer's income comes from residuals -- payments from reruns and reuse of their work elsewhere than the original showing.

Their current deal for residuals on home video was created in a pre-DVD era when TV shows were not generally released on video. At that time, Mr. Bowman said, the WGA agreed to take a small cut from sales of TV shows released on home video to help preserve the home video market. How small? Less than a nickel per DVD boxed set sold, divided among the show's writing staff, which can sometimes number a half-dozen or more people.

While residuals are on the table in this negotiation, for some writers, that's water under the bridge. The bigger concern is to make sure the DVD debacle doesn't happen again in the new media era. As fewer shows are rerun on TV, writers want a residuals deal for TV shows delivered on other platforms, most notably, online.

"We have to address new media," said Josh Friedman, showrunner of Fox's mid-season "Terminator" TV series, "The Sarah Connor Chronicles." "I don't know what else is more important than that."

The studios, represented collectively in negotiations by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, don't want to commit to paying residuals until they understand how the new media environment will shake out. In a parallel of the crisis facing American newspapers, television networks and studios are seeing their TV audience shrink, while their online audience grows.

But if more people watch TV on the Internet, they're not watching as many commercials, and it's those advertising dollars that have traditionally paid the networks' programming bills.

Nielsen Media Research reported this week that while Internet advertising rose 23.2 percent, network TV advertising was down 3.8 percent in the first half of 2007. Add to that continually declining ratings and rising production costs -- most hourlong dramas now cost at least $2 million per episode -- and it's clear the prime-time television business model is in upheaval.

Mr. Graboff said entertainment companies need to study all the different ways of delivering their product to viewers and to watch consumer behavior before agreeing to profit-sharing in guild contracts.

"We need to know what the pie is before we can figure out how to divvy it up," he said.

Mr. Bowman said the best way to do that fairly is to deal writers in for a percentage of those profits, whatever they may be.

"When the future is rosy, you pay a lot, and when it's not very good, you pay very little," he said. "When they get paid, we get paid. When they don't, we don't."

The studios reject that notion because they say they need the flexibility to use online streaming of programs, without paying residuals, as promotion for their on-air content. Additionally, if advertising supported online streaming is going to be the model of the future -- and it's looking more likely than the pay-per-download model that was popular a year ago -- studio chiefs say they need time to see how both consumers and advertisers will respond to that prospect.

"We can't simply agree upfront to give them a piece of some of that revenue because there may not be revenue associated, and yet we're being handcuffed in our ability to be flexible to utilize this new digital infrastructure to get our programs sampled," said Bruce Rosenblum, president of Warner Bros. Television Group.

He added that the ability to get shows sampled online is in the best interest of the creative community because it may be a way to help shows succeed and keep their writers employed.

"What they want to do is use our product for free for three years while their companies do some study on how this business works," said Shawn Ryan, creator and writer of FX's "The Shield. "Come on. You're telling me you haven't tried to figure out how this business works? The information is out there."

Mr. Graboff said the WGA prevents the writers of "The Office" from creating more Webisodes for that series.

"As a result, a bunch of writers didn't get work that they otherwise would have gotten," he said.

Mr. Bowman replied, "I know the showrunner. They weren't sad to be doing that work for free."

Norman Samnick, an attorney with the law firm Bryan Cave in New York, has worked on behalf of management in entertainment industry labor negotiations in the past. He believes a strike is more likely to happen next summer when the contract with the Screen Actors Guild expires on June 30.

"I think the writers are going to wait and see what happens with SAG," he said. "If SAG goes out [on strike], they'll go out."

Mr. Samnick said the writers and actors guilds are allied, but the actors have more clout.

"[The writers] can't close the business down in one day, but SAG can," he said.

Mr. Samnick thinks that if the studios settle with the actors, they'll come to terms with the writers: "If SAG makes the deal, the writers will fall right into place," he said.

With negotiations between the WGA and AMPTP ongoing, onlookers are holding their breath, hoping both sides will avoid a repeat of the 1988 strike, a 22-day walkout that cost Hollywood $500 million, according to Wired magazine.

"I think the results would be disastrous," said Jeffrey Stepakoff, author of the book "Billion-Dollar Kiss," chronicling his work as a TV writer. "I think it would be catastrophically worse than the 1988 strike and worse than what was talked about in 2001 [the last time there was the threat of a writer's strike]. Will it happen? I have no idea."

Standing on the set of TNT's "The Closer," a series Daily Variety reports is being shopped to broadcast networks as contingency programming in the event of a strike, Warner Bros. Television President Peter Roth said a strike would be bad for the TV industry.

"I've been through two strikes before, one 20 years ago and one 27 years ago," he said in July, "and each time I don't believe the gains either side made was for the greater good of the audience."