When 30 Rock kicked off, Liz Lemon's fictional TV series The Girlie Show had already been on the air for a season. Lemon got thrown a hefty curveball when a GE executive named Jack Donaghy took over NBC. It was immediately evident that he knew nothing about television, though that wouldn't stop him from making random decrees as he saw fit. And Jack's failures as a TV exec started as early as Season 1, Episode 1 of 30 Rock.
John Francis Donaghy was born and raised in Boston, Mass. After working his way through school, he rose through the ranks of General Electric to become one of its top executives. It was there that he was renamed Jack by another executive who was already named John. His biggest success was the creation of a Trivection oven, a game-changer in the kitchen. This earned Donaghy a massive promotion.
This moment in Jack's career brought him into the orbit of Liz Lemon and her sketch comedy series, The Girlie Show. She created the series with her friend, Jenna Maroney, from her Chicago improv days. Jack took over running NBC at this point, immediately making changes like renovating his predecessor's office. The other big change was getting Liz to recruit Tracy Jordan.
That was one idea that actually worked out pretty well for everyone involved. Tracy's career was on a bit of a downward slide at that point. And it's hard to say if The Girlie Show would have lasted as long as it did without him. Jack did have a few other successful ideas over the years, including MILF Island, America's Kidz Got Singing and Homonym! But those wins were few and far between as failure plagued his run at NBC.
Season 1, Episode 1 was a prime example of this. While Liz was unwillingly out recruiting Tracy, Jack took over producing an episode of TGS. He ended up greenlighting a sketch that was supposed to be cut. On top of that, he put Jenna on stage with a live cat in the closing sketch that attacked her. She ended up throwing the poor animal against the wall. Plus, the episode was a few minutes short.
Fortunately, Liz and Tracy showed up to save the day, but it proved that Jack was out of his element. Even Kenneth picked up on this, commenting that Jack really didn't seem to understand show business. And if Kenneth picked up on something like that so quickly, then it had to be embarrassingly obvious. What was interesting about this comment was what Jack did near the end of the series.
By Season 7, Episode 11, Jack had become the CEO of the Kabletown, NBC's parent company. He needed to find a successor to head up NBC and he chose Kenneth. Jack admitted to himself and Kenneth that he had botched his run at NBC. As such, he was giving the former NBC Page the job. Jack knew Kenneth would do a better job than him in the role because he actually cared about and understood TV. It was the smartest decision Jack made while at NBC.