Tentative plans to get Comedy Central's flagship Daily Show and Colbert Report programmes back on the air are being drawn up.

According to the New York Times, the shows would be tweaked in the event of a prolonged work stoppage and focus more on interviews and ad-libbed asides than scripted jokes.

The paper quoted Writers Guild of America East president Michael Winship as saying: "These two shows are a big source of news for a whole generation that was not around for the 1988 strike. Losing Stewart and Colbert is something like losing Cronkite during the Vietnam War. And because they are accessed in any number of ways both on television and on the Web, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are exactly what we are talking about at the bargaining table."

Both shows are currently on hiatus.