Live from New York, it’s 30 Rock
Live — or on tape, depending on where you live — 30 Rock is about to stage one of those fly-by-the-seat-of-their pants broadcasts that, half a century ago, was the only way TV could be beamed into your home. Live from Studio 8H is 30 Rock’s second try at a live broadcast, and follows little more than a year after the October 2010 outing, Live Show. Ironically, that episode was done live because production had fallen behind on the Emmywinning comedy. This time, the reasoning has more to do with the broadcast networks’ growing alarm at sliding ratings overall, and a need to distinguish a show from every other show.
30 Rock will probably return for a seventh season in the fall, but still, a little buzz wouldn’t hurt, especially when the show’s weekly audience in the U.S., about three million viewers, equals The Big Bang Theory’s audience in Canada some weeks, and its lead-in show, Community, suddenly seems the hipper and smarter of the two.
That may be why Community’s Donald Glover will appear in tonight’s live 30 Rock, playing a younger version of Tracy Morgan’s character, Tracy Jordan. Glover reportedly does a killer Morgan/jordan impersonation.
The show may be live, but there is a script. The story will revolve around the studio’s decision to can live broadcasts of 30 Rock’s show-within-a-show, TGS, a loose, low-budget version of SNL. The studio’s cost-cutting measure causes Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) and Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) to consider how much easier their lives would be if TGS is canned and made on the cheap, instead of broadcast live.
(NBC, Citytv – 9:30 p.m.)