30 Rock

CHICAGO – Zombies. Dragons. Gangsters. Meth dealers. David Lynch. It was a weird year for television. Was it a good year? Sorta. It was nowhere near the landmark year of 2011 but there was still a lot to like and it was easy to get to 30 shows worth mentioning.

CHICAGO – The 64th Annual Emmy Awards will go down on Sunday night and this year promises to be more unpredictable than ever…unless it’s not. While most pundits are thinking that this is the year that the Academy will take risks and award new blood, there’s just as much of a chance that we’ll see as many repeat winners as ever, maybe more.

CHICAGO – NBC/Universal released a wave of Blu-ray and DVD releases last week as four of their comedies came home with “30 Rock: Season 6,” “The Office: Season Eight,” “Parks and Recreation: Season Four,” and “Up All Night: Season One.” For some reason, “The Office” is the only NBC comedy available in HD (with an UltraViolet copy to boot) but all four sets are well-transferred and three of them feature impressive bonus material. Get your laugh on.

CHICAGO – The 64th Annual Emmy nominations were announced this morning and AMC’s “Mad Men” and ABC’s “Modern Family” were the big winners. Check back to HollywoodChicago.com for a list of the biggest snubs this year and stay tuned for all of your 2012 Emmy coverage.

CHICAGO – The 64th Annual Emmy Nominations will be announced this Thursday, July 19, 2012 at 7:40AM CST by Nick Offerman (“Parks and Recreation”) and Kerry Washington (“Scandal”). We’ve already made clear what should be nominated in this feature but what will be nominated?

CHICAGO – The just completed “Just for Laughs Chicago” comedy festival brought in a variety of name acts. Insult comedy, improvisation and stand up was performed by Jeff Ross (“Comedy Central Roast”), Scott Adsit (“30 Rock”) and Chris D’Elia (“Whitney”).

CHICAGO – While some stand-up comics shield themselves with an ironic, larger-than-life persona, Kevin “Dot Com” Brown’s approach is more conversational. He mines the humor in his own life while developing a genial rapport with the audience. Some may still find him to be larger than life, but that would most likely be due to his formidable size.

CHICAGO – NBC revealed their Fall schedule today and there were multiple surprises including comedies moving to Tuesday and Friday nights (we were wondering where all of the sitcoms would go) and a Fall cycle of the hit singing show “The Voice.”

CHICAGO – Good news, TV fans. NBC has made official several of their on-the-bubble shows, renewing “Community,” “30 Rock,” and “Parenthood.” The good news is a bit tempered though as “30 Rock” has been cleared for only 13 episodes and most are assuming its a final season.

CHICAGO – NBC gave us the news we’d all been hoping for since one of the best comedies on television was unceremoniously pulled from the air — “Community” will return to Thursday nights on March 15th, 2012. Of course, with good news comes bad news as “Parks and Recreation” goes on hiatus until April 19th. At that point “Up All Night” will have ended its 24-episode run and “Parks” can return. Confusing enough for you?