HOLLYWOOD, March 31 — The string of bizarre disappearances gripping the nation with fear has seemingly claimed more victims. This time, the entire cast and crew of a well-known sketch comedy show have vanished, leaving authorities baffled.

West Hollywood sheriff’s deputies were dispatched early Saturday morning to the famed Studio 60, long-time home of NBS live comedy staple Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, after receiving a spate of calls from concerned citizens. Viewers who tuned in to Friday night’s show expecting ribald 19th century light opera parodies or topical Ebonics jokes, instead saw only an empty soundstage.

“It was the funniest thing,” said Jody Reed, one of several viewers who reported the incident. “After a few minutes of watching this empty stage and wondering what the heck was going on, I just started laughing out loud. ‘This is hilarious,’ I was thinking. That was when I knew something must be terribly wrong.”

When officers arrived on the scene, they found only visibly puzzled guest host Keri Russell and musical guests The Spin Doctors. There was no trace of any member of the Studio 60 cast or crew. Subsequent attempts to contact Studio 60 personnel revealed that no member of the staff had been seen for several days, nor had NBS executives Jordan McDeere and Jack Rudolph.

A thorough search of the premises turned up nothing to indicate foul play. The only unusual item found was a wooden baseball bat on which was carved a single word: “Hiatus.” Investigators later noticed a faded phone number scribbled beside the carving, belonging to professional baseball player Darren Wells. Wells is wanted by police for questioning, but his whereabouts are also unknown at this time.

Due to public concern over the disappearances, the FBI Missing Persons Unit has been called in to investigate, but agents have so far turned up few clues.

“This is the damnedest case I’ve ever been involved in,” said Unit head, Special Agent Jack Malone. “Usually we crack these things wide open in an hour, maybe two tops, but this one’s got us stumped. It’s as if some greater force completely outside our perception simply waved its hand and erased these people from the world.”

The Studio 60 incident is only one of several recent, high profile disappearances. Shortly after the son of millionaire industrialist Conrad Cain was kidnapped earlier this year, Cain himself went missing, in addition to Cain’s wife, the federal agent assigned to the case, a loose cannon private investigator, family dog Champ, and the Cains’ Guatemalan houseboy, Tico.

Other recent victims include Los Angeles police detective Brett Hopper, cup salesman Bobby Stevens and a group of his associates, and eight survivors of a bloody hostage situation that arose during a botched bank heist. For a time, six seemingly unrelated yet inextricably linked New Yorkers were also believed missing, but have recently been seen going about their business as though nothing happened. Investigators now believe that the six were never actually missing, but in fact were simply so boring that they went completely unnoticed for several months.

While previous disappearances could be tentatively explained, any motive behind the Studio 60 incident remains unclear. “The cup guy had some shady business contacts,” said Agent Malone, “and we thought the bank hostage people might have gone through with some sort of murder-suicide pact. Post-traumatic stress disorder, you know? But for every single person even remotely tied to this show to suddenly pop out of existence… it defies reason.”

“Some of these people had enemies, no doubt. In particular the two head guys, Danny Tripp and Matt Albie, were by all accounts shallow, narcissistic pricks of the highest order. Tripp also appears to have been a ruthless sexual predator. I could understand if somebody wanted them both dead. But the rest of these people seemed likeable enough, if a bit dull and one-dimensional. Could somebody have hated the miserable bastards in charge enough to take out every single person who ever associated with them?”

“I just don’t know,” Malone added, before trailing off and staring silently into space, as though battling powerful personal demons.

While the cast and crew remain missing, Studio 60’s time slot will be filled with reruns of one of NBS’s many highly successful reality shows.