Alec Baldwin had fans hyper-ventilating Wednesday when he again hinted that he might leave NBC, home of “30 Rock,” the comedy series in which he stars.
Once again, it’s all wrapped up in high Baldwin drama. This time, it involves a struggling Canadian actress named Genevieve Sabourin, with whom Baldwin may have had dinner a couple of times and who has been busted for allegedly stalking him after news got out that he’d gotten engaged to a yoga instructor.
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What gave fans the vapors Wednesday was a series of tweets lobbed by the actor, saying things like, “I think I’m leaving NBC just in time.” That was after spying cameras from NBC’s morning infotainment show “Today” staked out his residence, presumably because of the stalker story.
It’s got to be unpleasant for someone who is being stalked to think that America’s most watched morning infotainment show is broadcasting shots of his apartment building.
“The television crew camped outside my apt said they were with the Today Show. #howthemightyhavefallen,” tweeted Baldwin, who plays NBC chief Jack Donaghy on “30 Rock.” He also tweeted: “A story about stalking sure brings out the stalkers in the media. But, the Today Show?”
Apparently, Alec hasn’t been keeping up with the war for viewers between NBC’s longtime front-runner and ABC’s “Good Morning America,” which came within 119,000 viewers of “Today” during one recent week.
Anyway, those tweets sent The Reporters Who Cover Television into orbit:
“Alec Baldwin: I’m Leaving NBC,” headlined the Daily Beast.
“Alec Baldwin accuses NBC’s ‘Today’ of stalking him, says he’s leaving the network,” chimed in zap2it.com in a headline.
“Alec Baldwin Tweets He’s ‘Leaving NBC’ In Wake of ‘Today’ Show Stalker Ambush,” Celebuzz headlined, wordily.
But the story here isn’t whether Baldwin’s leaving NBC — it’s whether NBC is leaving Baldwin.
NBC’s actual real-life chairman, Bob Greenblatt, told a gaggle of reporters at Winter TV Press Tour 2012 that the network had signed Baldwin for “30 Rock’s” seventh season, which would be next season. But NBC has not yet announced whether it will pick up “30 Rock” for another season.
In fairness, it’s understandable how the media could get confused, what with Baldwin’s long history of announcing that he’s leaving “30 Rock.”
In 2007, he got nailed in the media for a voice-mail recording in which he called his then 12-year-old daughter a “rude, thoughtless pig” because she had not answered his phone call. At the time, Baldwin told The Ladies of “The View” that he would leave “30 Rock” to devote the next three to five years of his life “to the cause of parental alienation.”
Sadly, he had already signed a contract to do another season on the show, which NBC, in turn, had already announced had been given an early pickup.
And in July 2010, in a CNN interview, he said he would leave the show — as well as acting — when his contract ran out in ’12, because he yearned for a life away from the Hollywood spotlight.
“As much as I like acting,” he told CNN, “I know that I would love to have a different life. A private life. I think that doing this now for a living has become really, really hard. I would rather go do other things, and with whatever amount of time I have left in my life, have more of a normal life.”
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