Strange Bedfellows : Television: Cable channels and the over-the-air networks, once enemies, are pooling creative efforts to gain viewers and exposure.

They used to call it fraternizing with the enemy.

Home Box Office, MTV and Nickelodeon are working hard to produce new pilots for summer and fall program schedules--but you won’t see the new shows on cable.

Instead, “Chameleons,” an HBO pilot for a series about a secret agent, “The MTV Comedy Show” and “Nickelodeon Gets Real Mature,” if they make the final cut, will show up on ABC. HBO’s “TV,” “Down the Shore” and “Roc & Reg. E” are candidates for Fox’s lineup.

And sources say discussions are under way with CBS and NBC to produce pilots for those networks as well.

The idea seems a little strange at first, considering the bitter rivalry between cable and the networks. Executives at ABC, NBC and CBS have blamed cable--along with upstart Fox Broadcasting, independent stations and VCRs--for stealing their previously undiluted audiences and advertisers.

For their part, some cable producers have ridiculed the Big Three networks as sluggish, old-fashioned behemoths who appeal to the lowest common denominator and spend too much money on their programs.

Now, with hatchets tentatively buried for these first, in some cases hesitant, efforts, the idea is for each side to get a little of what the other has had all along.

“We keep trying to branch out and bring new people to the network, like (“Twin Peaks” producer) David Lynch and those kind of folks,” said Stu Bloomberg, ABC’s executive vice president for development. “We thought we should go after younger demographics, and nothing was working for us on Saturday night.”

The plan, according to executives involved in the projects, is to bring new, less-expensive blood to the networks, while giving exposure to the cable producers.

“For a long time, we saw people (to whom) we had given a start go on to be famous for a lot of other production companies and other networks,” said Chris Albrecht, president of HBO Independent Productions.

While stars like Roseanne Barr and Keenen Ivory Wayans (of “In Living Color”) went on to make millions for the networks and Fox, HBO had to sit back and watch, Albrecht said.

“We did the Roseanne Barr special a few years ago, and she wanted to do a series with us,” Albrecht said. “We were not in the series business, and we couldn’t do it.”

MTV and its sister company, Nickelodeon, joined the fray last winter, when executives from ABC--desperate for young viewers--asked if producers at the music and children’s channels would like to try their hands at network pilots.

At first, according to Doug Herzog, MTV’s senior vice president for programming, the company was hesitant. Worried that producing for the network meant competing against its own programs, executives decided that MTV and Nickelodeon would each produce just one show and see what happened.

“The obvious question is, ‘Do you want somebody to watch an hour of ABC as opposed to watching an hour of MTV?’ ” Herzog said. “That’s a question that has crossed our minds and has been debated hotly and often.”

At Nickelodeon, which has recently stepped up its own internal production arm, the decision to work with ABC is part of a broader expansion, according to president Geraldine Laybourne.

“We see Nickelodeon as having a broader life than just as a cable channel,” Laybourne said. “We’ve just started a publishing program, we have a studio (at Universal Studios Florida) that is also a theme-park attraction, and we see possibilities of features and all kinds of things.”

To a degree, cable’s move into production for broadcast is part of the continuing evolution of the television business: ABC and NBC, after all, already are in the cable business--ABC owns ESPN, NBC owns CNBC, and the two are partners in A&E.; And Disney, for example, produces programs for the broadcast networks, for its Disney Channel on cable and for the local station it owns, KCAL Channel 9--all of which compete with one another for viewers.

“We don’t really consider (the networks) competition, because they’re in a different business than we are,” explained HBO’s Albrecht. “They’re in an advertisement-driven business and we’re in the subscription television business.”

In addition, Albrecht said, the huge companies that now own many production concerns tend to think that the more programs they have out in the market, the better--even if some of those programs compete against each other.

However, the idea of having a cluttered mass of programs, all bearing logos from programs available on other outlets, does not please everyone. Some cable operators are worried that the program services they now sell will become less valuable if the distinctions between channels are muddied.

“Once the companies we’ve started with our hard work all these years start putting out identical product, that would be something cable operators would be very concerned about,” said a high-ranking executive in a major cable system, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Bob Thompson, senior vice president at Tele-Communications Inc., the nation’s largest cable operator, said that operators “weren’t losing sleep” over the prospect, but they were looking carefully at the new ventures.

“On the one hand, there’s the consideration that we like our cable networks to be strong and successful,” said Thompson. “On the other hand, we do like a separate and distinct product among our cable systems.”

At MTV and Nickelodeon, however, executives say they are working with the cable operators to devise a format that will work for both.

The programs, for example, will carry the pay channels’ logos, and will not run against similar original programming on either MTV or Nickelodeon. The right to show the programs as reruns will revert to the pay channel after two airings on the networks.

“I think it will help them as well as us,” said ABC’s Bloomberg. “Having their show on a network is going to give them broader exposure, and might pump some more folks back to their cable network.”