I have to admit, the chief loss I’ve personally felt from the ongoing television writers’ strike has been the lack of new episodes of “Late Show with David Letterman”. Nothing else I watch on TV — sports, old sitcom reruns and movies — has impacted my viewing pleasure more than semi-regular tune-ins of Dave.

That might be remedied soon. Because Letterman owns his show via his World Wide Pants production company — versus the television network ownership of the other late-night programs — there’s a chance of an interim agreement with the writers that would allow “Late Show” (and sister program “Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson”) to start up again, regardless of the situation between the union and the networks.

If it happens, Letterman will have a potential edge over his rivals:

The other hosts have been debating about when they might be able to come back on the air and it has been expected that at least the two chief NBC late-night stars, Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien — both of whom are the longtime ratings leaders in their time periods — would announce early Monday a plan to return to the air, probably on Jan. 2.

If they do come back then, they might have to do so without their writers if the strike is continuing — and both sides expect that it will be. Additionally, the late shows might have some difficulty booking guests who were reluctant to cross a picket line. That too might put them at a disadvantage to Mr. Letterman, whose two shows would not at that point be picketed.

Late-night programming is a cash cow for the networks, so a race there to get around the Writers Guild strike could conceivably start a chain reaction toward a more general break in the labor dispute. We’ll see.