Remember the Way Things Used to Be? Strike That

Like little crocuses cautiously peeking their heads out of the ground after a long, cold winter in hope of finding they're still in a lush green meadow and not the strip-mall parking lot some developer was trying to get through planning-and-zoning in November, the television industry is cautiously peeping its head out to determine exactly how the landscape has changed during the long, cold three-month Hollywood writers' walkout.

The landscape, they already sense, has changed dramatically, in the strip-mall-parking-lot direction. Either forever, or for the next few months, depending on whom you talk to.

At meetings Saturday in New York and Los Angeles, Writers Guild of America Big Cheese will lay out for striking scribes the tentative agreement they have reached with the major studios in "informal talks" over the past couple of weeks.

If all goes as scripted, the writers will react by throwing their hats into the air and shouting "Huzzah!" -- after which the East Coast's council and West Coast's board will vote to suspend the strike that has crippled the TV industry (unless you're the network that has "American Idol," "Moment of Truth" and the Super Bowl, in which case you're feeling fit as a fiddle) and cost local economies billions of dollars, according to various studies.

Should the writers' strike end next week, as all but the 10-minute WGA eggs seem to hope, the TV networks will ramp up their hit shows ASAP. (Except, maybe "24," which Fox said in November it had pulled for the season due to the strike. Now, they put the odds "24" will come back this season, if the strike ends soon, at slim to none.)

Most scripted series could still produce a very few more episodes for this season. But each network will have to decide whether to bother, which might mean extending the TV season into June, or to just concede the point and focus on next season.

That said, even those shows sent back into production for what's left of this season would not be back on the air right away.

Even the most cockeyed optimists forecast a month's wait to get scripted dramas and single-camera comedies (think NBC's Thursday half-hours) back on the air -- though there is that finished "The Office" script that could not be shot when star Steve Carell refused to cross the picket line to shoot it.

Multi-camera comedies, such as on CBS's Monday slate, could get back on the air sooner -- as quick as two weeks, those cockeyed optimists say.

All those freshman "bubble" series -- you know, the ones that were doing not great, not horrible ratings, but weren't canceled because they were shut down anyway due to the strike -- will be lined up against the wall and executed. Excepting the very few that had shown at least a glimmer of ongoing ratings viability.

If the strike does end soon, the so-called pilot season for next year's prime-time lineup can be salvaged, but it will be very short and very different.

The networks dumped dozens of scripts during the strike. Some of the ones they hung onto will be picked up, subject to rewrites, and there will be much scrambling, given the networks are already a month past their deadline for ordering drama pilots.