Your brand-new 40-inch high-definition television might not get as much use as you planned in the coming weeks or months, unless the negotiators representing screenwriters and the big Hollywood studios can nail down a labor agreement. But if a possible writers’ strike does shut down most TV and movie productions, some creative entertainers are placing their bets on much smaller screens your computer monitor and the Web-enabled displays on many mobile phones and other portable devices.

As public use of high-speed Internet connections has grown, amateur video producers have been using online video-sharing sites such as YouTube to compete for viewers in a global talent show, often minus the talent. Mainstream entertainment companies quickly have gotten into the act, too, creating online video programming as a way to promote and now resell and redistribute their traditional fare. Some big studios offer behind-the-scene clips and interviews tied to new films and TV programs. Others produce and distribute full-fledged scripted “webisodes” featuring characters from popular shows.

The prospect of a work stoppage sometime after the end of the month, when the studios’ contract with the East Coast and West Coast chapters of the Writers Guild of America expires, creates a new opportunity. Some potentially underemployed writers, producers, directors and actors are talking about teaming up to produce and distribute their own professional online programming, without any big-studio help.

In some ways, the tactic would be similar to newspaper strikes seven years ago, when workers in Detroit and Seattle temporarily published their own online editions. In Hollywood’s case, however, potential strikers could be helping give rise to an entirely new way of doing business. “Writers want to write,” screenwriter Brian Russo told Advertising Age in discussing the possible strike. “They’re not going to stay home and learn to crochet or watch ‘Murder She Wrote.’ This is the best chance to have creative control.’’

Some entrepreneurial entertainers have already been taking advantage of opportunities the Web offers. This spring actor Will Ferrell and his production partners founded the comedy video Web site Funny or Die, and a clip featuring Ferrell being berated by a foul-mouthed 2-year-old landlord quickly became an online hit. Funny or Die welcomes user-generated content, too, but it’s generated buzz with exclusives featuring well-known names: Bill Murray appeared in a recent nine-minute “CSI”-like spoof in which two dedicated magazine fact-checkers break into Murray’s New York apartment to determine if he really drinks warm milk before he goes to sleep.

Online video also offers artists freedom from increasingly stringent broadcast restrictions on profanity and content that touches explicit sexuality — a major focus of both Congress and the Federal Communications Commission in recent years. In fact, many potentially objectionable or offensive clips on sites such as Funny or Die are labeled NSFW, for “Not Safe for Work.” A drought of new films and TV shows during a strike could dramatically expand the audience for provocative online material, providing a draw for mainstream talent and advertisers.

That might be an unfortunate turn for the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the studios and networks in labor talks that were ongoing late last week. The studios want to rein in the “residuals” paid to writers whenever their work is rebroadcast, syndicated or put on a DVD. And they’re holding off on agreeing to any extension of the use-by-use residual payment system to online distribution, saying payments should be based on a project’s total profitability from all markets. “There are no ancillary markets anymore,” Warner Brothers chief Barry M. Meyer said at an industry press briefing in July. “It’s all one market.’’ In talks, some studio execs have also reportedly asked for three years for flexibility to study online business models before settling on a permanent new payment system for new media work.

The writers’ negotiators are pushing for contract coverage for work done explicitly for “the Internet, cell phones and other new media” and for residual payments for any writing reused online. They emphasize that the networks already are collecting ad revenue from re-airing TV programs online and for selling downloadable copies of films and TV programs through various online entertainment sites, and they want rules better defining their share.

“We want to see the industry continue to succeed and grow,” guild leaders wrote last week in a letter asking their 12,000 members to consider authorizing a strike once the contract expires. “But we must ensure that writers keep up with that growth and success, and participate in the revenue generated by our work in new markets.”

Watching this back and forth from the sidelines are two other powerful Hollywood labor groups, the Screen Actors Guild and the Directors Guild of America, whose own contracts expire next June.

The rest of us will be watching, too — in one medium or another.

From the Oct. 8, 2007, CQ Weekly. Mark Stencel is deputy publisher and technology columnist for Governing magazine, published by Congressional Quarterly Inc.