Brian Damage
12-01-2006, 07:44 PM
NBC's remade Thursday comedy lineup, which debuted last night, will remain intact for a while.
The network has given a full-season order to "30 Rock," the lone freshman series in the group, following some of its best ratings performance of the season. It becomes the fourth new NBC show to be picked up this season, following "Heroes," "Studio 60" and "Friday Night Lights."
"In '30 Rock,' [creator/star] Tina Fey and [executive producer] Lorne Michaels, along with stars Alec Baldwin and Tracy Morgan, have the goods with this excellent comedy," NBC Entertainment boss Kevin Reilly says. "We look forward to future episodes of this bright new show, which is right on-brand for our Thursday-night comedy block."
Like "Studio 60," "30 Rock" is set behind the scenes at a sketch comedy show. It focuses on the fictional show's head writer, Liz Lemon (Fey), whose life is thrown into chaos by the arrival of a new NBC executive (Baldwin), who bullies her into hiring a mercurial movie star (Morgan) onto her show's cast.
Jane Krakowski, Scott Adsit, Jack McBrayer and Judah Friedlander also star in the series.
The pickup comes one day after "30 Rock" made its time-period debut at 9:30 p.m. ET Thursday night. It drew 6.6 million viewers -- the most since the series premiere in October -- and a 3.0 rating among adults 18-49, its best showing ever in the key ad demographic. It retained better than 75 percent of the audience from its lead-in, the season premiere of "Scrubs" (8.45 million viewers, 3.9 in adults 18-49).
Both figures are improvements over the show's season averages of 6.1 million viewers and a 2.4 adults 18-49 rating.
The network has given a full-season order to "30 Rock," the lone freshman series in the group, following some of its best ratings performance of the season. It becomes the fourth new NBC show to be picked up this season, following "Heroes," "Studio 60" and "Friday Night Lights."
"In '30 Rock,' [creator/star] Tina Fey and [executive producer] Lorne Michaels, along with stars Alec Baldwin and Tracy Morgan, have the goods with this excellent comedy," NBC Entertainment boss Kevin Reilly says. "We look forward to future episodes of this bright new show, which is right on-brand for our Thursday-night comedy block."
Like "Studio 60," "30 Rock" is set behind the scenes at a sketch comedy show. It focuses on the fictional show's head writer, Liz Lemon (Fey), whose life is thrown into chaos by the arrival of a new NBC executive (Baldwin), who bullies her into hiring a mercurial movie star (Morgan) onto her show's cast.
Jane Krakowski, Scott Adsit, Jack McBrayer and Judah Friedlander also star in the series.
The pickup comes one day after "30 Rock" made its time-period debut at 9:30 p.m. ET Thursday night. It drew 6.6 million viewers -- the most since the series premiere in October -- and a 3.0 rating among adults 18-49, its best showing ever in the key ad demographic. It retained better than 75 percent of the audience from its lead-in, the season premiere of "Scrubs" (8.45 million viewers, 3.9 in adults 18-49).
Both figures are improvements over the show's season averages of 6.1 million viewers and a 2.4 adults 18-49 rating.