The veteran American broadcaster David Letterman used his prime-time show to speak out in support of Hollywood writers poised to go on strike, a move which could take some of the country's most popular programmes off the air from Monday.

Letterman, whose nightly programme will be affected next week if the strike goes ahead as expected, described producers as "cowards, cutthroats and weasels" on his show.

The 60-year-old television host invited viewers to imagine what his show would be like without his team of writers producing new material. "It might be fun ...to tune in and see what I can come up with on my own," he joked.

Scripted talk shows, such as The Late Show with David Letterman and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, will be the first to be affected. Stewart's show is broadcast in Britain on More 4. American dramas imported to British screens such as Lost, Heroes and 24 will only be affected if a strike lasts for more than a season.

The Writers Guild of America (WGA) announced last night that its negotiating committee had made a unanimous strike recommendation, drawing an enthusiastic response from its 3,000 members attending the meeting at the Los Angeles Convention Center, according to a report by Variety magazine.

A final decision to press ahead with a strike could be made today, but insiders believe that a walkout is a "foregone conclusion", the magazine reported. "There is still a chance of relaunching the negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP) over the weekend. But that scenario is doubtful, given the vitriolic rhetoric that has dominated in recent days."

A strike would be the guild's first since 1988, when a 22-week stand-off cost the film and television industry an estimated $500 million.

The current dispute concerns the Guild's wish to increase residual fees for writers on DVD releases and internet downloads. The WGA offered to keep the current DVD rate for releases that made less than $1 million but demanded that the fee doubled for any disc worth more than $1 million at the wholesale level. Writers currently receive less than five cents of a US dollar for every DVD sold.

Nick Counter, president of the producers' association, said yesterday that negotiations over DVD revenues were the stumbling block. "We are ready to meet at any time and remain committed to reaching a fair and reasonable deal that keeps the industry working, but the DVD issue is a roadblock to these negotiations," he said in a statement.

Writers have been told that they should go to work today and wait for a call or e-mail from strike leaders.

The unanimous recommendation by the WGA was announced during a closed meeting of Writers Guild of America members late on Thursday, the day the union’s contract with the studios expired after three months of talks that deadlocked over royalties for new technology.

The executive boards of the union’s East and West Coast branches “will meet Friday to consider the recommendation of the negotiating committee and to decide the next steps,” the WGA said this morning.

David Garrett, a comedy writer, said: “There’s an impasse and there’s no progress. It’s about all we can do.”

The AMPTP, the bargaining arm of the studios, said in a statement that the union’s strike recommendation was not a surprise. Mr Counter said: “We are ready to meet and are prepared to close this contract this weekend,”

A lengthy strike will impact television programming and movie production, although Hollywood studios have been stockpiling scripts in the event of a stoppage.

The prime-time schedules will start filling up with more reruns and game shows after the networks have burned through fresh episodes. The new shows fighting to hold viewers’ attention in the first few weeks of the new season face a grim future if they have to leave the schedule for an extended period.

The WGA’s three-year contract, covering 12,000 movie and TV writers, expired on Thursday. Union leaders won approval two weeks ago from members to call a strike if deemed necessary once the contract expired.

The two sides brought in a federal mediator this week to try to break the deadlock on the key issue of remuneration in the digital age.

The studios have said union demands for higher residuals on DVDs and Internet downloads would stifle growth at a time of rising production costs, tighter profit margins and piracy threats. They insist that digital distribution of movies and TV remains largely experimental or promotional and new-media business models are just developing.

The union accuses the studios of pleading poverty and argues that writers have never gotten a fair deal on the lucrative DVD industry. They also see more of film and TV migrating toward the Internet and wireless platforms and want a larger proportion of revenue.

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