Friday Night Lights News

In case you missed it, Friday Night Lights is returning for a third season this fall - albeit under very unique circumstances.

The acclaimed, but low-rated series will now debut episodes on DirecTV, before rebroadcasting them later in the season on NBC.

In addition, Season 3 will be comprised of a shorter 13 episodes, all of which will air exclusively on DirecTV beginning in the fall.

With DirecTV shouldering some of the production costs, NBC then will begin airing the same slate of Friday Night Lights episodes in mid-season.

Season 1 of Friday Night Lights had a full 22 episodes, while Season 2 was originally slated for 22 until the writers' strike cut it to 15.

The second season of Friday Night Lights ended before most of its key storylines could. We can't wait for it to return.

NBC has just launched an auction on its website with a bunch of different props from its hit shows. Friday Night Lights is one of the shows featured.

A portion of the proceeds from the auction will benefit the United Way. The NBC auction runs through December 3, at which point a new batch of props are going live! Here are the items relating to Friday Night Lights up for bids...

• Dillon Panthers Cheerleading Uniform
• Official Tim Riggins Panthers Jersey
• Football Autographed by Friday Night Lights Cast
• Autographed Lyla Garrity Cheerleader Megaphone
• Jason Street's Panthers Football Helmet

To bid on any of these awesome Friday Night Lights items and see some of the other stuff up for auction from other hit NBC shows, just click here!

The ratings are in for the most recent episode of Friday Night Lights, November 16's "Pantherama!" Take a look at the ratings from the 9-9:30 p.m. interval ...

CBS - Moonlight
Viewers: 8.19 million (#2), A18-49: 2.7/ 8 (#1)
NBC - Friday Night Lights
Viewers: 6.45 million (#3), A18-49: 2.2/ 6 (#2)
ABC - Women's Murder Club
Viewers: 8.82 million (#1), A18-49: 1.7/ 5 (#3)
CW - Friday Night Smackdown!
Viewers: 4.74 million (#4), A18-49: 1.4/ 4 (#5)
Fox - Don't Forget the Lyrics
Viewers: 4.38 million (#5), A18-49: 1.6/ 5 (#4)

Now let's look at the 9:30-10 p.m. interval ...

CBS - Moonlight
Viewers: 8.22 million (#2), A18-49: 2.7/ 8 (#1)
NBC - Friday Night Lights
Viewers: 5.47 million (#4), A18-49: 2.0/ 6 (#2-T)
ABC - Women's Murder Club
Viewers: 9.06 million (#1), A18-49: 1.9/ 6 (#4)
CW - Friday Night Smackdown!
Viewers: 4.93 million (#5), A18-49: 1.5/ 4 (#5)
Fox - Don't Forget the Lyrics
Viewers: 5.51 million (#4), A18-49: 2.0/ 6 (#2-T)

It appears Friday Night Lights averaged 5.96 million viewers for last Friday's episode. Interestingly, however, the show ranked second and tied for second in the key 18-49 demographic, the most heavily targeted by advertisers.

Here's hoping for even better news this week.

In what seems to be growing consensus among executives, the Hollywood writers strike could continue for sometime - but this could mean a faint glimmer of good news for one group of shows: struggling prime-time series.

Very soon the networks will begin running low on original episodes of most shows. Any new episode will become an increasingly valuable commodity.

No network is going to waste paid-for episodes. So the marginal shows will stay on until their episodes run out between now and the end of January.

Thanks to the strike, some marginal shows will surely get to run their full slate of episodes — and perhaps win a shot at coming back next year.

In this group are first-season series like Journeyman and Life on NBC, K-ville and Back to You on Fox, Big Shots on ABC and Cane on CBS.

Some holdovers may also be affected for the better, such as Friday Night Lights on NBC, Men in Trees on ABC, 'Til Death on Fox and Shark on CBS.

A show like Friday Night Lights, for instance, with high critical praise and low ratings, could get a chance to break through in January, when it's likely to be among the few fall series with some new episodes left.

As previously reported, Friday Night Lights started Season 2 production early and producers managed to get 15 episodes completed before the strike.

Continue reading in the New York Times ...

The wardrobe trailer for Friday Night Lights — an 18-wheeler with mirrored doors on the back — is more or less a clotheshorse's dream, reports today's Austin American-Statesman: it's a gigantic walk-in closet.

Professional stylists and costumers buzz around the long racks of clothes, sectioned off by character. The trailer is stationed in the Northeast Austin church parking lot that serves as one of the base camps for the NBC show.

One thing, though. These aren't exactly fashion-forward clothes.

The show, set in fictional Dillon, has won acclaim for its small-town authenticity - in everything from the characters' homes and cars to their wardrobe.

"That's one of the most challenging aspects of our job — not to make people look too hip," costume supervisor Jaimey Sloan says. "Sometimes it's hard to find stuff that looks like they bought it in Dillon, Texas. But at the same time, we have actresses from L.A. who know what's in style."

Kathy Kiatta, a friendly but hurried woman in jeans and Western boots, is among those milling about. The costume designer, Kiatta oversees the characters' looks, from the main cast to those who appear just briefly.

"It's much faster than shooting films," says Kiatta.

To help keep it all straight, every outfit for every scene is logged. Each garment also gets a tag that details which scenes and episodes it's been in, to avoid having the characters wear something two days in a row.

As Kiatta and Sloan think about tomorrow and the upcoming episode, supervisor Taylor Rierden has the current episode on her mind. It's her role to make sure the actors are in the right clothes at just the right time.

Costuming can be a challenging job — but can be a fun, too, of course. One of Kiatta's favorite parts is dressing the character of Brian "Smash" Williams, the Dillon Panthers' cocky running back, played by Gaius Charles.

"I have so much fun shopping for this guy," she says, waving a hand over his rack of jewel-toned, fine-spun button-downs.

They decided Smash, a ladies man with a job at the Alamo Freeze, spends his extra money on clothes. "I get a lot of stuff from (Neiman Marcus) Last Call."

Surveying another character's rack, she shakes her head.

"Poor Matt Saracen is not spending his money on clothes."

With sick Grandma to care for and his dad in Iraq, Saracen (Zach Gilford), the Panthers' quarterback, doesn't have the means nor time to look spiffy.

Continue reading in the Austin American-Statesman ...

Soon, Friday Night Lights and most other shows will go into repeats or hiatus until Hollywood's labor disputes end. How soon? That depends on how the networks play December, typically a month of few viewers and many repeats.

Airing more repeats than usual would take most prime-time series into January, at best. The Los Angeles Times reports that amidst the Writers Guild of America strike, 15 of 22 Friday Night Lights episodes - more than most series expect to complete - will be finished when production shuts down. Stay tuned.

It looks as though the ongoing Hollywood writers' strike could affect the future of Friday Night Lights. The show, among NBC's most acclaimed, is filmed in Austin and brings in $1.5 million per episode to the city.

The show's producers said because of the strike, there is only material written to keep working through December 4. Production would stop then, although there are several additional episodes that have already been written and shot.

NBC would not comment on plans for Friday Night Lights, but it doesn't appear there will be a resolution to the writers' strike anytime soon.

Marching in protest, thousands of television writers and their supporters blocked the road in front of a studio near Los Angeles Friday morning.

"I've spent the last 25 years of my career working with writers, and I understand their grievances in this case, and I don't believe they're being unreasonable, and so I'm here to support that," said actor Kelsey Grammer.

The strike will most certainly affect what people watch.

"I am an empty shell waiting to be filled in by the material written by these folks," said Tonight Show host Jay Leno.

The Tonight Show shut down production in the wake of the strike, and NBC announced Friday they are looking for guest hosts to replace Leno.

Members of the Writers Guild of America said they want residual pay for movies and shows that end up downloaded or offered for free online.

"The backbone of this industry is the people whose faces aren't recognizable, the people trying to get by, make a living and get what's due them," said actor Tim Robbins. "This is simply an issue of fairness."

Network prime time schedules could be reduced to the two R's: reality shows and repeats. There is no sign that contract talks will resume.

The last writers' walkout was in 1988 and lasted more than five months. It cost the industry an estimated $500 million.

A return to the glory years appears to be within reach for the real life Panthers of "Friday Night Lights" fame. Odessa Permian is 9-0 going into its regular season finale, the latest into a season they've been unbeaten since 1993.

"What's happening now has been a thing that's kind of brought back the good old days," said former Permian coach John Wilkins, who went 148-16 with two state titles from 1973 to 1985. "The crowds are coming back."

Odessa Permian won six state championships, three of them in the 1980s when the Panthers lost only 11 games. At that point, the assistant coaches were lured to better jobs and the school's pre-eminence gradually faded.

The last title came in 1991, and the vaunted Panthers lost an unthinkable 49 games in a 10-year stretch from 1997 through last season. That included the longest losing streak in school history, a six-game skid in 2004.

But an Eric Taylor-esque young coach — the only one of 11 since 1959 who also played for the school — is turning things around in this small West Texas city known for two things: oil and football. 

A return to glory: Odessa Permian - the school chronicled in the book "Friday Night Lights" by H.G. Bissinger - is unbeaten going into its season finale.

Last year, in only his second season, Darren Allman led the Panthers to a 9-4 season and a regional semifinal loss to Southlake Carroll, a school with four state titles in five years in Class 5A, the state's largest.

Gary Gaines, one of Allman's predecessors whose 1988 team was depicted in the book of the same name that inspired the movie and series Friday Night Lights, said the 38-year-old Allman has returned the team to fundamentals.

"He just had a little better insight as to what was needed," Gaines said. "He has just put it all together."

Continue reading this article on Permian from MSNBC ...

It's common knowledge that branded entertainment is becoming popular on TV as marketers — worried about how easy it is to avoid commercials -­ arrange for their products to be woven into the plots of shows, reports the New York Times.

Allstate Insurance tried a different angle last Friday, as you might have noticed if you watched Friday Night Lights. You may call it cause-related entertainment, integrating an issue into an episode of a scripted television series.

A plot line in "Backfire," last week's episode of Friday Night Lights, was focused on encouraging teens to drive safely. Allstate has been promoting the cause for months, in traditional advertising efforts like TV commercials and PSAs.

Last Friday, Friday Night Lights viewers did not see a poster about safe driving bearing an Allstate logo on a wall, or an actor playing a local Allstate agent reassuring teenagers that they're "in good hands."

Instead, the issue was brought up through "Backfire" scenes in which a principal cast member, Julie Taylor (Aimee Teegarden) is being taught to drive by her dad, coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) and her mother Tami (Connie Britton).

After the episode, there was a special Allstate commercial, created by Leo Burnett in Chicago, part of the Publicis Groupe, devoted to teenagers and safe driving. The spot introduced a section of the Allstate Web site about the issue, encouraging both teenagers and parents to sign a safe-driving "contract."

"What we are getting is real," said Lisa Cochrane, vice president for marketing at Allstate in Northbrook, Ill.

Although Allstate has had its agents appear on "It Takes a Thief" on the Discovery Channel, discussing how to thwart identity theft, "this is new" with a scripted show on a big broadcast network, Cochrane said.

Chuck Blomberg, V.P. for central sales at NBC Universal, who lists Allstate among his clients, said the issue "fits really well with the sensibility of Friday Night Lights," a drama in its second season about a Texas high school football team.

The writers of the acclaimed NBC series were asked "not to include Allstate as a brand," Mr. Blomberg said, "but to look at the topic of safe teen driving as something to focus on" and then "weave it into the episode."

Continue Reading...

Earlier this week, TV Guide reported that NBC is considering another time slot (and night) change for Friday Night Lights. Determined to get viewers to tune into its critically acclaimed series, NBC is reportedly mulling a move to Monday nights for the West Texas small-town football show.

Specifically, this plan would have Friday Night Lights airing at 10 p.m., following the sci-fi hit Heroes. A lead-in with strong ratings could be just want FNL needs. If you would like to see this Monday move happen - or simply tell NBC how much you love the show, period - contact the network and let your voice be heard!

All you have to do is click here, select Friday Night Lights from the drop down menu, share your comments and hit "send." It only takes a minute of your time. Do what you can to help save this great show and convert more fans! 

Do it for us. For you. For Buddy Garrity. He can't lose his Panthers!