At “Saturday Night Live,” when two writers come up with the same sketch idea—Hey, we should do Dick Cheney shooting his buddy in the face!—the sketches are said to be “bumping” to get on the air: usually, only one succeeds. Now two promising TV pilots loosely inspired by the backstage goings on at “S.N.L.” are themselves bumping to get on NBC’s fall schedule.

Aaron Sorkin, the creator of “The West Wing,” has written “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” starring Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford as a creative team that’s called in to rescue the network’s signature live sketch-comedy show. Tina Fey, the “S.N.L.” star, has written a show called—for now—“The Untitled Tina Fey Project,” starring Tina Fey, of all people, as the head writer at the network’s live variety show. Her pilot features Alec Baldwin as the network’s meddlesome new “V.P. of development for NBC/GE/Universal/Kmart.”

Fey’s comedy is set in New York at a fictional NBC, and Sorkin’s drama is set in Los Angeles at a slightly more fictional NBS, but both feature network heavies named Jack. Kevin Reilly, the real-life president of NBC Entertainment (which is a division of General Electric and a sister company of Universal but is not, as of this writing, affiliated with Kmart), explains, “Jack was G.E.’s pre-approved network executive name.” More seriously, he says that when both scripts arrived on his desk, last fall, “I saw the problem coming from a mile away. But these are very particular artists, who write what they care about. They’re not writers for hire who say, ‘Whattya got—a boy and his dog? I’ll write that!’ ” Reilly is at pains to note that neither show is based on actual NBC dynamics and that each is tonally distinct: “Tina is more madcap, and Aaron is exploring issues and character dynamics and has a real romance at the center.” Sorkin’s pilot begins with Wes, the executive producer of NBS’s show, reacting to a censor’s decision to kill a sketch called “Crazy Christians” by addressing the camera and urging viewers to turn off their sets:

WES We’re eating worms for money. . . . Guys are getting killed in a war that’s got theme music and a logo. That remote in your hand is a crack pipe [that profits] this prissy, feckless, off-the-charts greed-filled whorehouse of a network you’re watching.

“That part,” Reilly acknowledges, “is based on us.”

Lorne Michaels, the longtime executive producer of “S.N.L.,” is also an executive producer of Fey’s pilot. When Sorkin asked Michaels to permit him to observe “S.N.L.” for a week, Michaels, protecting his turf, declined. “I haven’t read Sorkin’s script,” he says, “but God knows I’ve been told about it. Since we do sketches about Christians all the time, I guess he’s going for a bigger set of issues, his characteristic subject being power and its responsibilities. But is this a new insight, that networks are not to be trusted?” Michaels goes on, “The reality is that the network isn’t that powerful anymore—talent is.”

Fey’s pilot takes a swipe at talent in a scene in which Liz, the head writer, meets with Tracy, an unhinged movie star whom her new boss wants as a regular on the show. Tracy takes her for a ride in his red Hummer:

LIZ This is a great car. What does it run on? Jet fuel?                 TRACY It runs on fame juice.                   LIZ Wonderful.

Alec Baldwin, who has hosted “S.N.L.” twelve times, says, “I’d be stunned if NBC picked up both shows. And ours has the tougher task, as a comedy, because if it’s not funny, that’s it. Whereas a drama can start off as a hard-hitting medical show about real issues, and before you count to three it’s about who’s fucking who.” Tina Fey, taking a somewhat higher road, says, “It’s just bad luck for me that in my first attempt at prime time I’m going up against the most powerful writer on television. I was joking that this would be the best pilot ever aired on Trio”—a cable channel, owned by NBC Universal, that ran failed shows. “And then Trio got cancelled.”

Sorkin, taking an even higher road, one dictated by his studio, Warner Bros. Television, a unit of Time Warner (which is also not, as of this writing, connected with Kmart), was unavailable for comment. But Kevin Reilly says that NBC might well have room for both shows, particularly if Fey’s ends up as a midseason replacement. “The only way we could screw it up,” he says, “is if the audience gets confused.”

Networks being what they are, Fey suspects that confusion is inevitable: “We’ll probably end up doing a terrible crossover, where the Matthew Perry character on the drama rapes my character on the comedy—and then the ‘Law & Order’ team solves the crime.”