NBC: Two ‘SNL’ shows on one network?

That other “Saturday Night Live’ show: Tina Fey’s ’30 Rock’
“Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” takes a fairly serious look at the behind-the-scenes life at an “SNL”-type show. “ 30 Rock,” from “SNL” vets Tina Fey, Lorne Michaels and Tracy Morgan, is the comedy version. Michaels joked that “they are the hour show and they have a ‘60’ [in the title], and we’re the half-hour show and we have ‘30’ [in our title].”

Fey plays a character much like herself. She’s Liz Lemon, the head writer on a comedy show called “The Girlie Show.” New corporate honcho Alec Baldwin comes in from GE’s microwave oven division and requires Lemon work with troubled comic Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan), who’s seen in a news clip running down the middle of LA’s 405 freeway clad only in his underwear and waving a lightsaber. Morgan was later asked if he based his character on Martin Lawrence, but he denied it, saying he didn’t personally know the comic, “but I know my Uncle Rick. … Martin didn’t corner the market on meltdowns. … only … Rick didn’t have no drawers on at all.”

The show will obviously draw on the stars’ and Michaels’ “SNL” experience, but Fey said it won’t be mean-spirited. “I have no interest in taking shots at my own family,” she said, referring to her former “SNL” co-workers. She described the show as a workplace comedy, but “a workplace that is a little more visually appealing and a little more dangerous.” And Michaels later added “Intelligence is always present in {Fey’s] work.  …You just trust that and support it.”

Pieces of the ‘Rock’:

• I briefly met Tina Fey later at the NBC party. She was as sweet and approachable as I hoped she’d be. She was wearing a black dress with burnished coppery sleeves, and further endearing herself to women worldwide, was carrying her black high heels and walking around the grass barefoot.
• Fey won’t be returning to “SNL,” though later she didn’t rule out the possibility of guest-hosting the show. But no more “Weekend Update.” “I’m out of the fake news business,” she said. Rachel Dratch has also left “SNL” for “30 Rock.”
• Asked how she would juggle being the star, writer and producer of the show, Fey confessed “I’m gonna go nuts. … The one thing I have going for me is I do not understand the train that’s about to hit me.”