Who's the newest Six Sigma expert? Tina Fey. The cultish quality process observed by her employer, NBC Universal, is a predictable source of profitable laughs for her show, 30 Rock and all too real.
• How do you keep your magazine afloat? Put ads on the cover! [NYT]
• NBC is renewing 30 Rock, The Office, and The Biggest Loser. [AP]
• Music sales fell by about 7 percent last year. [NYT]
• The head of Hearst Magazines International is retiring. [NYP]
• Clear Channel is cutting $400 million in costs. [NYP]
• The Minneapolis Star Tribune has filed for bankruptcy. [AP]
• Donny Deutsch's ad agency is laying off staffers. [AgencySpy]
It's a well-known fact that in the 1980s, everyone did cocaine all the time. But how did people come down from their drug highs? In Alec Baldwin's case, sobriety arrived through destroying enormous insect aliens!
Remember this lady, Sarah Palin? She was famous for appearing every Saturday night on the tee-vee, saying cute things about Russia, gays, and Katie Couric. Or maybe that was her portrayer, Tina Fey?
Last night's 30 Rock seemed a bit familiar, didn't it? It felt like something we'd read was just being basically reiterated to us, with a lot more jokes. The episode took place mostly at Liz's 20 year high school reunion, and we came to see that she was an acidic loner at her suburban Philadelphia school, with extra weight and big silly eyebrows. Where have we heard this tale before? Oh! Yes! Of course! In the cover story on creator/star Tina Fey for this month's Vanity Fair! Snide. But, y'know, funny.
Sure, Tracy Morgan might barely be the fourth-tier mascot for plugging 30 Rock, but put yourself in NBC's shoes while watching his haphazard run through reader-submitted questions at the network's Web site: If Tina Fey is teetering at the cusp of overexposure, Alec Baldwin is flaking on the Washington Post's own readers, and Jane Krakowski remains shellshocked from her time in Rosie O'Donnell's product-placement infantry, then who else is there? "President Obama of the Crayons" just wouldn't sound the same from Jack McBrayer. Or maybe it's just that there is such a thing as a stupid question. Find out either/or/both after the jump.
Every so often, Vanity Fair will consent to putting a television star on their hallowed cover, but there's typically an implicit bargain that actor has to make to earn it. Think back to Teri Hatcher, who grabbed VF's top spot only after revealing how childhood sexual abuse led to fantasies of suicide (which the magazine teased on its cover with some disconcertingly unclad pictures of the star, because of course). Now, Vanity Fair has placed Tina Fey on the cover — an utterly justified spot, to be sure — and has finally nudged the actress and her husband to reveal something Fey always said she wouldn't: just how she got that famous facial scar.
♦ Michael Wolff's biography of Rupert Murdoch goes on sale tomorrow, as you probably know thanks to the torrent of coverage over the past couple of days. Among the juiciest bits: Murdoch despises Bill O'Reilly, his wife Wendi Deng occasionally reads his email, and he's fond of sleeping pills. [NYT, Gawker, Politico, NYO, Portfolio]
♦ The third quarter of 2008 was a punishing one for newspapers. Ad revenue plunged 18.11 percent, the steepest decline in four decades. [E&P]
♦ Tina Brown's pick for host of Meet the Press: Rachel Maddow. [TDB]
♦ Four Christmases was No. 1 at the box office over the weekend, racking up an estimated $31.7 million in ticket sales. [THR]
Washington Post readers expecting an audience with Alec Baldwin last hour were disappointed when the star backed out of his live chat appearance at what appears to be the last minute. "Alec is running a few minutes behind schedule," the editors noted shortly after 1 p.m. "We should be starting soon." And then, not long afterward, the final indignity: "Alec Baldwin had to cancel. We will try to reschedule for either later in the day or a future date." Probably just something about an overlooked sushi date with his daughter; that's the life of a working Dad for you.
Well, that depends on how you define "undo." Ratings-wise, it's down a tenth from Jennifer Aniston's episode last week, which itself was down from Oprah's the week previous. (THR suggests that's not so much a bad sign for the sitcom as it is a natural settling after the season premiere bump it enjoyed following Feylinmania.) But if you define it as a return to form, then yes, something about Martin's presence—playing Gavin Volure, an agoraphobic Ted Turner type you later find out is actually under house arrest for embezzlement and racketeering—clicked the show back into all cylinders after a subpar third season start. Among its gems: the introduction of the term "away-toilet situation" into the popular lexicon, hand-puppet voodoo, and a description of Toronto as being "just like New York, but without all the stuff." Then there's the first date sequence above, in which Volure unwittingly presents himself as Lemon's sexless, TV show-goofing dream man. [30 Rock Full Episodes]
The good news about the Recession just keeps on coming! First it was layoffs at institutional hate monger Focus On the Family, and now it's a failure of reality television! The Los Angeles Times tells us that some once-very popular shows like Deal Or No Deal (aka Guess!), Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?, and Dancing With the Stars are down precipitously in the numbers this season. They deduce that this might indeed be because of the recession and the fears of stark reality it stirs up (as depicted by Lance Bass dancing). And if that's the case, then maybe this recession is a good thing! Let's just think of it like spring cleaning or an enema. Sure it's unpleasant in its way, but you'll also feel relieved and unburdened when it's over. Frankly, though it will pain me at first, I think I'll learn to live a better life without my beloved Cottage Living magazine, so you should learn to live without Survivor 43: The One Where They Finally Eat Poop. There's been talk of this phenomenon going down on Broadway—that a good purge will revitalize the medium—and maybe the same will be true of television. Look, good scripted TV shows like 30 Rock and Gossip Girl (OK, "good" is sort a of relative term there) are up! in the ratings. So, I know it must seem catastrophic now, but it'll all work out in the end. Sometimes, things just have to burn. It's nature's way.
Uncool, America. We realize it must have been a rough week for Jennifer Aniston, so we were hoping we could pass along some great news that her guest appearance on 30 Rock last night as a...woman who likes to do a lot of things but is ultimately crazy but not in a particularly ha-ha funny way?...boosted the show's ratings. Unfortunately, a season low of 7.5 million tuned in for the episode, which also happened to feature three Night Court cast members. Anthony Edwards's return to ER, however, boosted the show by 1.2 million viewers to 9.8 million. The moral? We're not really sure. Put Michael J. Fox on Kath & Kim and see what happens. [E! Online]
