Skip to footer

NBC's '30 Rock,' 'Community,' and 'Parks and Recreation' will be renewed, sources say

However, all three NBC shows will have shortened seasons.

|
Ali Goldstein/NBC/AP
'30 Rock' will be one of the NBC comedies returning for an abbreviated season next year.
  • By Scott Stoute Screen Rant

For those who are big fans of NBC’s Thursday night comedy line up, the news is good as the network is close to smoothing out deals for 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation and Community to return next season—but there’s a catch.

In what will be the seventh (and most likely final) season of 30 Rock, the Emmy-winning comedy series has been cut down to an episode count of only 13 or 14 shows. NBC has secured deals with the series’ key writers as well as co-executive producers Jack Burditt, Josh Siegal, and Dylan Morgan. Community and Parks and Recreation are also expected to make a return for next season, also with reductions in episodes. Following a long midseason hiatus, Community returned in March to complete its third season and will enter its fourth next fall with Parks and Rec back for a fifth.

No official word if either Parks and Recreation or Community will meet their ends next season—but rumors of 30 Rock’s swan song have been popping up for awhile – one of the most recent being from the unmuzzled mouth of  show star Alec Baldwin. After Twitter tirades about new time slots, and “stalking” from NBC’s Today Show, Baldwin stated that he will be back on the hit comedy next year, but 2013 will be its end. Baldwin then concluded his online outburst with “I think I’m leaving NBC just in time.”  The much calmer Tina Fey added to the claim last month on The View by saying the end is “visible on the horizon… We can’t do this for 35 years.”

NBC abbreviating its veteran Thursday night lineup may be a way of not only saving some money, but making room for the new comedies the network has planned – including Go On, starring former Friends alum Matthew Perry, which the network has recently picked up. With freshman shows Whitney and Up All Night not doing so well, it seems likely both will be added to the comedy cleanse – especially Whitney, as show star Whitney Cummings has landed a new talk show on E! called Love You, Mean It with Whitney Cummings, which is set to air this fall.

Scott Stoute blogs at Screen Rant.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to NBC's '30 Rock,' 'Community,' and 'Parks and Recreation' will be renewed, sources say
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Culture-Cafe/2012/0511/NBC-s-30-Rock-Community-and-Parks-and-Recreation-will-be-renewed-sources-say
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe