Word: sitcoms
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Tina Fey, formerly of Saturday Night Live, is in the midst of a major career change, one that has taken her from a late-night writers' room to, um, a late-night writers' room. On her sitcom 30 Rock, she plays Liz Lemon, head writer of The Girlie Show, a decently rated, woman-oriented sketch show. Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin), an executive at NBC's corporate parent General Electric who made his career selling GE ovens, decides it needs more male viewers. So he forces Liz to hire Tracy Jordan (SNL alum Tracy Morgan), a wild and (literally) crazy comic...
...sitcom, Liz is at odds with her boss. In real life, Fey agrees with what NBC says about 30 Rock, which she also writes and produces. First, even though the network has a second fall debut--Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, from The West Wing's creator, Aaron Sorkin--about a sketch-comedy show, neither series is about that other marquee NBC property, SNL. (Of course not. I'll assume they're about Mad TV.) Second, neither is in competition with the other. "I'm pretty sure we can never be on at the same time," Fey says dryly...
...imitation is the sincerest form of television. But usually it's different networks doing the imitating. How did NBC get two shows in the same unusual milieu in the same season? Apparently by coincidence. Fey, who had a four-year development deal with NBC, first pitched the network a sitcom about cable news. Kevin Reilly, president of NBC Entertainment, felt Fey was using the news setting as a fig leaf for her own experience and encouraged her to write what she knew. Sorkin, meanwhile, was shopping his return to TV with a show about TV--a topic that earned...
...Home for Purim, about a Southern Jewish family - that some showbiz blogger unaccountably tips as an Oscar contender. In a trice, the non-starry cast (impersonated by Catherine O'Hara, Harry Shearer, Parker Posey and Christopher Moynihan) gets dreaming of statuettes - an addiction that infects the film's director, sitcom veteran Jay Berman (Guest, funny) and the studio boss (Ricky Gervais) who now thinks the film could be big big big, if only everything were changed...
...Primetime Emmy Awards on Aug. 27 must sign and return a letter from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences acknowledging that they are aware that under IRS guidelines they have to pay taxes on their gift-bag goodies, even if they are the star of the hottest hit sitcom on network television. The letter is, in effect, the Academy?s way of absolving itself of responsibility for unpaid gift taxes...