Silence of the laugh tracks sets sitcom writers adrift.

Hillel Abrams thought he was on his way to a lucrative career as a sitcom writer when one of his stories was used on NBC's "'Just Shoot Me" in 1997.

"I was a script coordinator," he said. "The first year I got a "story by' credit, the second year an episode I wrote got produced. I got an agent out of it."

Cut to 2004 and a fall season in which the television networks have picked up 30 percent fewer sitcoms than the year before. Abrams, along with a host of other TV writers, is considering Plan B.

"If push comes to shove, I could get a job in the legal field," said Abrams, a 35-year-old former medical malpractice attorney. But returning to the law is not a prospect he relishes. "I was miserable the whole time.'"

Networks long have known that a hit comedy is hard to find, and those that do lake off can become extraordinarily expensive to produce. So with long-running half-hour comedies such as "Friends" and "Frasier" coming to an end this year, and little that's promising in the pipeline, there is concern--even a little panic--among the hundreds of writers who specialize in TV comedy.

Earlier this month, the six networks (NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, WB and UPN) announced fall schedules with 36 sitcoms, down from 50 last year.

It was another blow to sitcom writers who have been watching their specialty erode for the last couple of years in the face of an onslaught of reality shows and hour dramas. Fourteen fewer shows on the schedule means as many as 150 writers could be out of work.

Cyclical slump?

The sitcom business, which traces back to the start of television itself, has gone through other dry spells--most especially in the years prior to the 1984 start of "The Cosby Show," a breakthrough comedy on NBC that led to a rebirth of the format, and with it, a dramatic jump in writer pay. These days, an experienced writer, who in the hierarchy of television is considered a producer, can routinely make well into the six and even seven figures.

Some believe all that sitcoms need are a few good shows to renew the cycle. But others suspect that reality TV has altered the business model to such an extent that the situation comedy, as millions of viewers know it going back to the days of "I Love Lucy" and "Father Knows Best," is becoming an endangered species.

"The sitcom is dying. It's been really hard," said one writer who has penned scripts for Fox's "King of the Hill. "There's just not that much stuff out there."

In fact, the lack of work has sent him to the enemy camp--he's submitted an idea for a reality television show. "It's more of a thinker," he averred. "It's a social experiment kind of thing."

Others are not counting on a revival anytime soon and have started to leave the business. "Things just got really bad," said one former sitcom writer who took a job in communications at a major studio (and who like most didn't want his name used). "You gotta pay the bills."

Still others, like Bob Young, a 51-year-old veteran who has written and produced for "Boy Meets World" and "The Facts of Life," are staying home. After writing for 25 years, he has added another activity into his routine: Walking his dog. And he counts himself among the lucky.

"I've been here for the heyday of the sitcom," he said. "I've paid down the mortgage on my very large house. I'm OK. But a lot of people are not because they didn't have as big of a payday as I did three years ago. The question for most of us is: 'Do you stay in the game or fold?' Do you go into another business, teaching, selling cars or something else?"

Cheryl Rhoden, assistant executive director for the Writers Guild of America, West, said that as far as the union is concerned, losses in one area are filled in by another.

"Programming decisions have always been cyclical," she said. "A few years ago, there were more comedies being scheduled and fewer one-hour dramas. This year it's the reverse. The number of employed writers remains fairly constant regardless of the genre of the moment."

A network development executive agreed, but added that a shill in programming does not mean the same set of writers would be working.

"For a comedy writer who writes only multi-camera comedies, that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to work on a drama," she said. "There are a few writers who do both, but for the most part, writers specialize. They're either one-hour or half-hour writers."

That reality is not lost on agents, who of course take a percentage of their clients' income.

"We encourage our writers to keep writing and try new projects," said an agent at Paradigm. In addition to a steady paycheck, he said, the more writing forms writers add to their portfolios, the better the chance of getting onto a staff.

And as bad as it looks, the prevailing strategy appears to be, wait and see.

"If it's what you want to do, it's hard to give it up," said the former "King of the Hill" writer. "And really, there's always a chance that tomorrow someone will love your script."

Young is not writing off the sitcom either.

"The format is going through a very stale cycle," he said, a similar situation to the early 1980s when "Dallas" dominated the airwaves.

"Right before "The Cosby Show' hit, sitcoms became very stale. Cosby reinvented them," said Young. "They got very stale in the late '80s, then 'Seinfeld' came along and re-energized" the industry."

But in the present, said Young, "the competition has been brutal.

"You have everybody like me who has been in the business for 20 years and would like to keep working, plus all the new writers who've arrived from Harvard who want to work. There are 10 times as many people available."