During a commercial break for Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip, NBC aired a promo for their other SNL inspired program, 30 Rock. Alec Baldwin appeared next to series creator and co-star Tina Fey expressing great confusion as to which of the two programs he signed to do, clearly hoping it wasn't the half-hour sitcom without the West Wing luster. The spot was funny but also demonstrated NBC's fears that the shows could cancel each other out in the public's mind, becoming one program featuring both casts called, Studio 30 Rocks The Sunset Strip. The promo was self-aware and self-deprecating but was also only a set up for a much more surreal moment that took place during the 30 Rock premiere. Tina Fey as Liz Lemon, the head writer and producer of an SNL-styled sketch program titled The Girlie Show, is called into a meeting with her new boss, Vice-President of "East Coast Television and Microwave Programming" Jack Donaghy, played by Baldwin. After informing Liz that he is taking over her show, Donaghy goes on to elaborate on how his great success in promoting the new GE Trivection oven can be applied to late-night comedy. This was not in itself surreal, but when the show went to commercial, it was not to the Geico Gecko or Subway Jared, but to an actual ad for GE's Trivection ovens. At first this seemed to be a throwback to the initial "TV shock" SNL once delivered by placing fake commercials between sketches. However, this was an actual commercial, for an actual GE product. What we were now seeing was a hall of video mirrors: a network television show produced by a corporate conglomerate about a television show produced by the same corporate conglomerate featuring a character shilling the conglomerate's real product between actual ads for said product shilled. Got it?
