Psst--Hey Buddy, Do You Wanna Buy a Sitcom?

What if you could own a piece of “The Ellen Show”?

Think of it--script meetings with the writers, sit-down lunches with series star Ellen DeGeneres, a chance to guide a new show from the ground floor. In an era of big-corporate ownership of entertainment product--and bland product at that--why not a publicly held sitcom?

And now it’s all conceivable, if improbable, thanks to the fire sale going on at Artists Television Group, the boutique studio founded in 1999 and financed by former super-agent Michael Ovitz.

The company, which is the prime-time production arm of Ovitz’s management firm, Artists Management Group, has shown an ability to get shows on the air (the sitcom “The Weber Show,” the drama “The $treet”) but not an ability to keep them there. Now, deficits have the company dismantling, with layoffs already eating up much of the staff.

Having shopped ATG around town and found no studios willing to absorb its entire inventory, Ovitz reportedly has been looking to sell off his assets piecemeal.

In other words, if you’ve ever dreamed of owning a TV show (or a writer in a development deal, for that matter), now would be an ideal time to invest. All it will take is you and a consortium of, say, 100 friends and acquaintances, a healthy sense of adventure and a few million dollars in seed money.

What’s for sale? Perhaps you could find a group of Beverly Hills physicians to invest in Adam Chase, a former writer on that NBC hit “Friends,” or Darren Star, the co-creator of “Beverly Hills, 90210” and creator-executive producer of HBO’s “Sex and the City” (impress your friends at “Sex and the City” viewing parties by pointing to the screen when Star’s name appears on the credits and saying, “I own that guy”).

Both Star and Chase are under multimillion-dollar development deals with ATG--so-called “overall” deals that have now been cast in doubt (Chase’s deal is a 50-50 partnership with NBC). Where these writers end up is a matter of deep concern for their respective agents and lawyers, all of whom are facing a climate in which the largesse of the industry toward overall deals isn’t as large as it was a few years ago.

So why, in this time of financial belt-tightening, couldn’t the public step to the plate? Why not take Chase or Star public and seek investors, people who would bet on a writer to create a hit show as if gambling on a company’s stock?

The trouble with the invest-in-a-writer theory, says an attorney with knowledge of such deals, is that there’s typically language that prohibits high-powered writers from simply being sold off to an ad-hoc group of investors.

Still, the notion isn’t all that odd to comedy writer Mitchel Katlin, who, with partner Nat Bernstein, is among the stable of writers with ATG deals.

“If you had several hundred investors who all had an opinion in how your product was produced, it wouldn’t seem like that much of a change from how TV is produced now,” Katlin said.

Meanwhile, there’s at least precedent for the public financing of an entertainment property. (And with apologies to “Cedric the Coach,” an ATG sitcom that is slated for midseason on the WB, “The Ellen Show” is probably a better bet).

You should know, prospective investor, that only 50% of the new sitcom is on the market and speculation has CBS close to taking over full ownership of the show. You should also know that the Sony Corp., in exchange for advancing ATG money to cover show production costs, is entitled to distribution fees for selling “The Ellen Show” domestically and abroad.

But for now, don’t cloud your head with these details. Instead, let’s focus on the show. I have interviewed DeGeneres myself, and I am here to tell you that she is primed for success in ways that she wasn’t when she had a show at ABC. She’s tanned, rested and focusing on “the funny.” Plus, she’s surrounded by talented people, including Cloris Leachman and Martin Mull, and writers with tons of experience on proven hits.

So what will it cost to own a piece of this can’t-miss opportunity? Industry observers estimate the per-episode cost of “The Ellen Show” to be at least $1 million, with the license fee from CBS covering most, but not all, of the show’s production cost. Translation: We’ll need a few million to finish financing the initial 13-episode order. And another few million to get us to the end of the first season, assuming we get that far. Then we’ll need more millions to get through seasons two and three. Have I mentioned that we won’t see a return on the investment until the show hits 100 or so episodes and can be sold into syndication?

Howard West, partner in the management firm Shapiro-West and Associates and a veteran of television deal-making, suggests calling our company Public Fools. West, whose company represents Jerry Seinfeld, star and co-creator of the mother of all sitcom successes, ticks off all the reasons buying half of “The Ellen Show” is a terrible risk: the years of debt amassed producing the show, Sony’s participation, CBS’ participation, the horrific failure rate in network TV.

“The money [to be made] is pushed so far down line, because you need 100 [episodes] to get into the syndication market,” he explains. “Then you’ve gotta go find your money. So it’s perfect for the public to get [taken].”

But let’s pretend, for a moment, that “The Ellen Show” is “Cats.” In 1980, legend has it, producer Cameron Mackintosh needed 500,000 pounds to open “Cats” in London. In desperation, he turned to the public, placing an ad in the financial newspapers for investors. He attracted over 200 people, including one man who gambled his life savings on the show. “Cats,” of course, became a smash, and these brave souls saw a return on their investment of 11-1.

Want more examples? How about the Coen brothers, who reportedly turned to a group of Minneapolis-area doctors and lawyers to fund their first movie, “Blood Simple.”

In the 1980s, Disney, through a company called Silver Screen Management Inc., began offering the public limited partnerships in the studio’s movies.

Look, finally, to what Mel Brooks called “the avalanche of Jews” who came together to fund “The Producers” on Broadway.

“The Producers,” of course, is about a pair of charlatans who scheme to bilk old ladies out of their money by getting them to underwrite a production that is bound to flop, called “Springtime for Hitler.” “The Ellen Show” is about an openly gay former dot.comer who returns to her small hometown to start life anew. And I ask you, does that sound like a flop?