• by Wayne Friedman , David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, February 13, 2008

Striking Hollywood writers voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday night to go back to work, putting an end to the longer-than-three-month strike and sending some of them to the office as soon as Wednesday morning.

The combined Writers Guild of America vote in New York and Los Angeles was 92.5% in favor of returning to work--3,492 voting yes to end the strike; 283 voting to stay off the job.

The immediate effect will be with late-night talk shows--NBC's "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" and "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" as well as ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel," Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report." Also returning this morning are the writing staff for soap operas.

Michael Winship, the head of the Writers Guild of America East, said writers who return to work on sitcoms will produce new episodes that could be on the air in four to six weeks, and drama writers could yield new episodes in six to eight weeks.

Although last night's vote of guild members lifted the work stoppage, the new contract the writers' union negotiated with the studios--the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers--won't be formally ratified until Feb. 25. Guild members can vote by mail until then or at meetings that day.

Winship classified the pending agreement as "very, very historic" at a news conference Tuesday, saying it "allows writers to go into the 21st century"--referring to the guild fighting to gain a share of revenues from the distribution of their work on new-media platforms.

The end to the strike also allows writers to begin prepping material for the Feb. 24 Oscars broadcast on ABC, which is being hosted by Jon Stewart. Not only is the show a ratings bonanza for ABC, but it serves to promote and boost attendance for films from multiple studios.

Although writers claim some major victories--most notably getting a percentage of TV shows that appear on the Internet--they might suffer in the long term.

Networks, particularly NBC, have suggested they would slash the number of pilots--a major source of income for writers, even if they never become series--as well as possibly trimming back the typical 22 episodes a season for most network series.

"The broadcast networks are determining which shows will be back with new episodes, which shows won't be back for the remainder of the season and which shows will be gone for good," Carat Shari Anne Brill noted in an 11th hour edition of her "Broadcast and Video Beat" newsletter sent to clients late last night. "So far, we are able to tell you with certainty that ABC's telecast of the Academy Awards will air as planned and Fox's '24' has officially been postponed until next year."

Winship said the deal reached with producers was not affected by networks' threats to curtail pilots and other traditional production avenues to save money. "We made the deal when we knew the deal was right to make," he said.

Some 10,500 guild members were impacted by the strike--8,000 in L.A. and about 2,500 in New York.