The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of Hollywood companies, said in a statement shortly before the strike was announced that its offer included “generous increases in compensation for writers.”

The primary sticking points, according to the studios, involve union proposals that would require companies to staff television shows with a certain number of writers for a specified period of time “whether needed or not.”

Chris Keyser, a chair of the W.G.A. negotiating committee, said in an interview early Tuesday morning that “philosophically, and practically, we’re very far apart.”

Over the last decade, a period that is often referred to as Peak TV, the number of scripted television shows broadcast in the United States has risen sharply. Writers, however, said that their pay has stagnated.

In the network television era, a writer could get work on a show with more than 20 episodes a season, providing a steady living for an entire year. However, in the streaming era, episode orders have declined to 8 or 12, and the median weekly pay for a writer-producer has gone down slightly, the W.G.A. said.