Will "SNL" Fever Transmit to "30 Rock"? It Deserves To...

Tonight at 9:30 ET on NBC is the third and final Thursday prime-time special edition of Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update." Next week, Tina Fey's 30 Rock returns to the schedule, reclaiming its old time slot with its third-season premiere.

Will 30 Rock continue to be unjustly ignored by the vast majority of viewers? Or will the Emmys earned by the show recently, Fey's dead-on Palin impression, and the current epidemic of SNL fever combine to finally make the show a hit?

Let's hope for the latter.

The fact that Fey and co-star Alec Baldwin both won Emmys for performing, and 30 Rock for best comedy, is no surprise. All you have to do is watch that sitcom to see how good it is, and how good they are.

But most people AREN'T watching 30 Rock -- so as it begins this third season, the "perfect storm" of Fey-Palin-SNL is its best chance.

Last weekend, when SNL had both the real Sarah Palin and Tina Fey's doppelganger as guest stars, the show drew an estimated 14 million viewers. That was good enough not only to be the biggest SNL audience since 1994, but also good enough, competitively, to have put SNL in that week's overall Top 10.

In prime time, though, the Weekend Update specials are a different matter. The premiere outing drew 10.9 million viewers, but last week's edition slipped to 8.83 million -- a drop of almost 20 percent. But that's still substantially above the usual draw for 30 Rock, which last season averaged only 6.4 million viewers.

For the month of November, 30 Rock is loading its roster with guest stars, including Oprah Winfrey one week and Steve Martin the next. But last year it had Jerry Seinfeld, who didn't help much. So maybe it'll take a combination of SNL fever and Tina Fey's sudden ubiquitousness to entice viewers, finally, to sample 30 Rock.

I hope so. Because 30 Rock has built it -- so if they won't come now, especially after the past month of free Fey publicity, they most likely never will.