Some striking Hollywood writers are trying to bypass Hollywood studios and reach consumers by putting video entertainment on the Web themselves, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday.

Negotiating to this effect are underway between members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and venture capitalists to set up companies, said the report.

The move was designed to create Internet-based businesses to create an alternative economic model to the one at the heart of the strike, which is in its seventh week, said the paper.

Three groups are working on projects similar to United Artists, the production company created 80 years ago by Charlie Chaplin and other top stars who wanted to free themselves from the studio system, The Times reported.

"It's in development and rapidly incubating," Aaron Mendelsohn, a guild board member and co-creator of the "Air Bud" movies, who is involved in a group he said comprises top film and TV writers, told The Times.

He said they will continue to develop the companies after the strike ends.

Most Hollywood writers are employed by studios to create movies and TV shows, but the studios own the copyrights and pay writers for the initial use of the material and a percentage of the rerun and DVD revenues.

Meantime, WGA officials were expected to reach working agreements with individual production companies, a shift in strategy that could result in new installments some of late-night talk shows.

Because the "Late Show with David Letterman" and "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson" are produced by the independent production company Worldwide Pants, they are able to reach an interim agreement with the WGA, independent of CBS.

"Since the beginning of the strike, we have expressed our willingness to sign an interim agreement with the guild consistent with its positions in this dispute," Worldwide Pants President and Chief Executive Officer Rob Burnett said.

Negotiations broke off Dec. 7 over the guild's demand to extend union jurisdiction over so-called unscripted series and animated programs. The strike began Nov. 5 over a dispute focusing on residual payments to writers for work distributed via the Internet, video iPods, cellphones and other new media.