By Tomorrow’s 30 Rock reunion special (which I honestly just learned is a thing) will not be airing on a number of NBC owned affiliate stations states a new report. According to sources close to Vulture and Deadline, it seems advertisers are worried about the series’ penchant for lampooning and roasting commercial products and the users that buy them. Various segments in episodes throughout the series’ run cutaway to a character taking the piss out of a product and that has advertisers worried.
Stations owned by Nexstar, Sinclair Broadcast Group, Tegna, Gray Television, and a few others will not be running the special, which is scheduled to run at 8 pm EST on July 16. The companies are already worried about how their products will be portrayed, but also can’t reconcile with NBC wanting to run the hour-long special ad-free. It seems the special is looking to promote Peacock (NBC’s upcoming streaming service), SyFy, and USA.
To me, this sounds like a bunch of garbage. 30 Rock was never a series meant to sell you something but act as a behind-the-scenes look at the insanity that goes into making something like Saturday Night Live. NBC obviously wants you to subscribe to Peacock, but it shouldn’t have to censor the content that goes into its programming just to appeal to marketing executives. If these stations have that big of an issue with it, then their content likely isn’t worth paying attention to in the first place.
