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FOR about 20 years, Bob Shayne had it good. He wrote for 1970's and 80's television programs like ''Good Times,'' ''Hart to Hart,'' ''Eight Is Enough,'' ''Magnum P.I.'' and ''Murder, She Wrote.'' He had no trouble finding agents to secure work for him. His annual salary was $150,000 to $200,000. 

Then in the mid-1990's, the phone stopped ringing. In about two years, he went from earning in the six figures to earning nothing at all. Though no one ever said so directly, Mr. Shayne, now 60, said that he knew what killed his career: his age. 

Like gender and race, age is a delicate issue in the workplace, one that has been the subject of numerous sticky discrimination lawsuits over the years. The subject is particularly sensitive in the world of television, where the 19-to-32-year-old demographic is the holy grail of advertisers, and the biggest hits of recent years -- from ''E.R.'' to ''Friends'' to ''Beverly Hills 90210'' -- are populated by characters in that age group. 

It is well known that actors in Hollywood, particularly women, are frequently sidelined in middle age, despite the wonders of cosmetic surgery. But why should writers, faceless and largely unknown, suffer the same indignity?

While no one would expect a 40-year-old actor to play a high school senior on ''Dawson's Creek,'' why does age matter for people who are, in theory at least, hired for their imagination and talent with words? Does being 41 mean you can't create situations or dialogue for a 22-year-old? A 16-year-old? 
Whatever the answers, television writers say that once they hit 40, they are finished. For as long as most people in the industry can remember, that conventional wisdom has gone largely unchallenged. 

But now 50 over-40 writers have filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court in Los Angeles maintaining that over the last two decades, the television industry has pursued a systematic and pervasive pattern of age discrimination against writers who have celebrated that dreaded birthday. 
''The untested, but universally shared, assumption,'' the lawsuit says, ''has been that writers over the age of 40 are inherently incapable of writing in the manner that is attractive to the younger audiences the networks covet.'' 

The 51 defendants named in the lawsuit -- originally filed in October and amended in November -- include 39 studios and networks and 12 talent agencies. Among these are NBC and its affiliated companies, Walt Disney Company and its subsidiaries, Fox Entertainment, Time Warner, Universal, Paramount, Viacom, Columbia TriStar, DreamWorks, International Creative Management and the William Morris Agency. 

On Jan. 5, the defendants answered with a motion to dismiss, asserting that the court should throw out the case in its entirety and then permit individual plaintiffs to sue particular defendants in separate lawsuits ''if he or she can plead the basic elements of an age discrimination claim.'' 

Several of the defendants in the lawsuit declined to comment because the litigation is pending. Bernard Weintraub, an agent at Paradigm, a talent and literary agency in Los Angeles, who is named in the court papers, suggested that there were grounds to the case, but that it had been badly handled.

''They would have been better off putting the agents on their side,'' he said. 
What all the writers involved in the suit are certain of is that they can still do the job. ''Maybe I couldn't write 'Friends,' '' Mr. Shayne said, ''but certainly half the shows on television I could write.'' 

Between 1977 and 1998, 56-year-old David Kinghorn of Santa Rosa, Calif., wrote more than 10 television movie scripts, including ''Deadly Encounter,'' ''Moonlight Becomes You'' and ''True Blue.'' ''I know what I'm doing,'' Mr. Kinghorn said. ''And I didn't get worse as I got older. In fact, I got measurably better.'' 

Like actors, writers go to great pains to conceal their age, excising credits for older television programs from their résumés, dying their hair or otherwise trying to change their appearances. One youthful looking actress, Riley Weston, lied about her age, saying she was 19 when she was actually 32. She was found out when she became a teen-age phenomenon -- a writer for the 1998 television series ''Felicity.''

''I could not be one age in the acting world and another in the writing world, so I chose to maintain the ruse,'' she said at the time. ''In a business fraught with age bias, I did what I felt I had to do to succeed.'' 

Some writers form partnerships with younger writers to show a more youthful face at meetings with television executives. ''You reach a point where you start hearing things like, 'Geez, you better drop your credits,' '' Mr. Kinghorn said. ''Or, 'I wouldn't advertise the fact that you sold a television movie in 1978.' '' He added: ''You go to these pitch meetings, you're like a Fuller Brush salesman -- they don't like that one so you pull out another one. Finally, your agent tells you, 'You know, they're just not interested in you.' '' 

Ann Marcus, who is in her 70's and a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said, ''Some of us are ashamed of saying we wrote for 'Mash' or 'Mary Hartman' or any of the sitcoms that were on then. Everything is current, current, current.'' 

Ms. Marcus serves on the board of the Writers Guild of America, which she said has found in studies of its members that the largest group discriminated against were writers age 40 and over. ''There's been no improvement,'' Ms. Marcus said. (In another action, the Writers Guild, many of whose members feel overshadowed by directors, is threatening to strike on May 1 to gain more control over their work in film and television.) 

Writing for television can be hard going, no matter what your age, say those in the profession. Unless a writer is classified in a top tier that virtually guarantees employment, writers say, half the battle is finding the next assignment. Mr. Shayne estimated that he sent out 500 to 1,000 query letters over the last several years. ''I was never what I would consider hot,'' he said. ''I always spent as much time or more time hustling as writing.'' 

Mr. Shayne suggested that, just as television actors and writers are getting younger, so are television executives. And these younger executives, he said, feel more at ease with their peers. ''They're not comfortable working with people the age of their parents,'' he said. ''They also don't stick their necks out very often, and if they do, they're going to do it for their roommate, not for their father.'' 

Mr. Kinghorn said he was replaced with someone younger on a project he had written because the people involved were not comfortable with him. In another case, he said, he was replaced after submitting one draft and told that the network wanted a writer with a younger feeling. ''You reach a point where you're uncomfortable with yourself,'' he said. ''It's like you get a little reluctant to submit stuff.'' 

WHILE the defendants in the writers' lawsuit maintain that one employer cannot be held liable for another employer's discrimination and that the lawsuit is overly broad, many of the writers say the proof of their claims is how drastically their lives have changed. 

One day, Mr. Shayne said, he found he could not pay the bills. His marriage fell apart. He borrowed money from friends and family. He still owes three years in back taxes. He started teaching part time. When the Writers Guild lowered its pension age from 60 to 55, he started receiving $3,200 a month. About 40 percent of that supports his two children. He lives on the rest in an apartment in Malibu, where he rents out the second bedroom for additional income. 

Mr. Shayne said he lasted longer than most, in part because he looked younger. ''When I perceived that I was falling out of the mainstream, I was in my mid-40's,'' he said, ''yet I hung in there.'' 

Mr. Kinghorn said he opted for early retirement, which cut his guild benefits in half; he now receives $2,500 a month. Had he waited until he was 62, he would have received full benefits, but he couldn't afford to wait. 
''It used to be you would have a wonderful, long career -- my contemporaries, if they were successful, wrote for decades,'' Ann Marcus said. ''Now a career of 10 years is it. And once you're gone, it's very difficult to get back in.''