Can Tina Fey bring ‘SNL’ fans over to ‘30 Rock’?

The idea that newly minted Fey-as-Palin fans might be converted to Fey-as-Liz-Lemon fans is an obvious one. But how does NBC pull it off? They can run ads during “SNL,” of course, which is a more potent strategy than one might think. The appearance by the real Sarah Palin pulled in a remarkable 17 million viewers, the show’s highest numbers in 14 years. That made the late-night comedy show the week’s third-highest-rated program, behind only top performers “CSI” and “Dancing With The Stars.”

But interestingly, not only will those numbers not necessarily translate into “30 Rock” viewers; they didn’t even translate to the very next “Weekend Update” special. That was the one with Fey’s plaintive, silent appeal to viewers, and it drew only about 8.5 million viewers. And that was in prime time.

The most obvious way to capitalize, beyond coy attempts at cross-promotion or raising awareness, would be to simply plunk down Tina Fey as Sarah Palin on “30 Rock” itself. A good old-fashioned stunt. For most shows, it would actually be such a stunt that it would be utterly unworkable, but for “30 Rock,” it might not be.

As was recently dissected in New York Magazine, “30 Rock” has gotten away with real product placement by seeming to make fun of product placement. Horribly obvious declarations of love for Snapple, for instance, are inserted into a scene in which the characters all discuss the fact that they would never stoop to product placement on the show-within-a-show.

That’s the joke; you manage to both mock the thing and be the thing at the same time. A blatant ratings stunt might be successfully carried off in the same way.

It isn’t hard to imagine a scene in which Liz’s fictional sketch show could be visited by Palin, who will —by then — either be the vice-president elect or a failed candidate. Liz runs around the building, narrowly avoiding run-ins with her alter ego, all the while indignantly telling Jack she’d never use a politician as a ratings stunt. Mock the thing and be the thing, right?

Over the first few weeks of the season (which surely would never have been delayed to late October in the first place if anyone had anticipated Fey’s “SNL” resurgence), it will become clear whether the continued ascendancy of Tina Fey will benefit her current show, or only her former show.

Linda Holmes is a writer in Washington, D.C.

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