Has there ever been a show as tied to a single network as 30 Rock? Besides, of course, news programming…
I’d say The Tonight Show with all its various hosts. Jack Paar walked off the show after a fight with the censors, Johnny Carson regularly made fun of the network as well as visited the sets of other shows, Leno and O’Brien aired their contract disputes.
On a rather lower scale, the British cable channel L!VE TV used to have a soap opera called “Canary Wharf” that was set and filmed in their own offices. In Canary Wharf.
When “Late Night With David Letterman” was on NBC, he relentlessly mocked both executives (especially after GE bought out RCA) and the network’s shows. Indeed when the infamous “Manimal” was scheduled to air in 1983, he spent much of the summer mocking the show. More than one NBC executive supposedly felt that’s why the show quickly failed that fall.
While the various nightly talk shows are good contenders, I don’t think any of them match up with 30 Rock in terms of being woven into the fabric of the NBC universe. I love all the cameos (especially when Brian Williams shows up, he’s surprisingly funny), as well as all the references to various NBC personalities.
Of course, they sometimes riff on other networks too, lest we forget CBS’s Les Moonvest. 
Fox shows (The Simpsons & Married With Children in particular) have a tradition of mocking the network, it’s executives, and other showers. But not to the extend 30 Rock does. I wonder if it’ll have any effect on a syndication deal. Presumably the shows been airing outside North America for years, both in the Anglosphere and outside of it.
It’s just unique to have the network so tightly woven into a sitcom (or any show, for that matter). Sure, shows like the Tonight Show are tied to NBC by it’s long history, but you could move the show to any network, and it would be the same show. It would be nearly impossible to move 30 Rock to another network without making huge changes to the storyline.
And who could forget the famous “GE handshake.”
I looked up Studio 60 and was surprised that the fictional show-within-a-show wasn’t actually set on NBC, but the fictional NBS.
That show was really dumb, now that I think about it… pretentious dreck.
Murphy Brown made fun of CBS & CBS News from time to time (FYI was supposed to be one of the network’s newsmagazines) - but even then, it wasn’t as much as 30Rock does with NBC.
Beavis & Butthead was both on MTV and to an extent about MTV, as a good chunk of each episode had the two main characters watching and commenting on music videos.
VH1’s Pop-Up Video (which I heard today is set to be revived this year) was similarly a show about music videos on a channel that played music videos, although it wasn’t a fictional program like 30 Rock or Beavis & Butthead.
Comedy Central/Short Attention Span Theater comes to mind.
Wait, are you saying 30 Rock is being shown outside the Anglosphere? Because I seriously doubt it. It just doesn’t seem like any of the jokes would translate. But the (U.S.) syndication rights were sold to Comedy Central and WGN without any apparent problems.
I watched it on Polish television.
Dubbed or subtitled? I have to say I’m really surprised.
According to Wikipedia, it’s aired in places as random as Slovenia, Croatia, and Hong Kong - and many more. Of course, not always successfully: the note about it’s German debut says that it got a 0.0 rating…ouch!
I’ll see that and raise you an I’m really, really surprised that you find it surprising.
Well, frankly the show doesn’t make much sense in translation. It’s not like the Nanny or Friends which derive their humor (such as it is) from pretty universal situations. 90% of the jokes on 30 Rock depend on knowing what SNL is, understanding US politics, and stereotypes about the South. I guess they have to change ~90% of the jokes and make them about people from Bavaria or whatever. Are beeper jokes funny in Slovenia? I doubt it.