Not What You Meant? There are 5 definitions for Friday Night Lights.

Friday Night Lights (TV series)

About 18 pages (5,449 words)

Questions on this topic? Just ask!

Friday Night Lights

Format	Drama
Developed by	Peter Berg
Starring	Kyle Chandler Connie Britton Zach Gilford Gaius Charles Adrianne Palicki Jesse Plemons Aimee Teegarden Minka Kelly Scott Porter Taylor Kitsch
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	32 (List of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)	Brian Grazer David Nevins
Running time	43 Minutes (Approx)
Broadcast
Original channel	NBC
Picture format	480i (SDTV) 1080i (HDTV)
Original run	October 3, 2006 – present
External links
Official website
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

Friday Night Lights is an Emmy Award-winning American television serial drama adapted by Peter Berg, Brian Grazer and David Nevins from a book and film of the same name. The series details events surrounding the Dillon Panthers, a high school football team based in fictional Dillon, Texas. The show uses a small-town backdrop to address many issues facing contemporary Middle America. Produced by NBC Universal, Friday Night Lights initially received an order of 12 episodes and began airing on October 3, 2006 at 8:00pm on NBC. NBC increased this number on November 13, 2006 ordering a full season of 22 episodes.^[1] In addition to airing in the United States, the program is also broadcast in Canada, The Philippines, Finland, Sweden, Ireland, Norway, Iceland, Italy, United Kingdom, the Middle East and North Africa, Latin America and is available from several online sources. NBC renewed the show for a full 22-episode second season in May of 2007 after the first season completed airing. Season two episodes began airing on October 5, 2007.^[2] Due to the 2007 Writers Guild of America Strike, only 15 episodes were able to be filmed before production had to shut down (which is many more than other networks shows). Their 15th episode could possibly be their season finale if the strike is not resolved in time.

Production

Inspiration

Main article: Friday Night Lights (film)

Friday Night Lights takes its inspiration from a book titled “Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream” and the 2004 film based on it. The book, published in 1990 and written by H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger, details the 1988 season of the Permian Panthers, a high school football team in Odessa, Texas. The book itself was intended as a work of journalism and is assumed to be completely factual. The characters in the book are not renamed and the book makes no attempt to conceal their identity.^[3] The Universal Pictures film stars Billy Bob Thornton and was directed by Bissinger’s second cousin Peter Berg. The film's characters are again based on the real life residents of Odessa circa 1988. The film is known for staying almost completely true to the source material.^[4]

Conception

Once filming on the movie was completed, Berg turned his attention to adapting the story for television. Berg expressed in various interviews following the film how he regretted having to jettison many of the interpersonal topics covered in the book from the film because of the time constraints of a feature film. Creating a TV series, particularly one based on fictional characters, allowed many of those elements to be brought back in and addressed in-depth.^[5] The show chose not to use Odessa as the setting and instead used it as inspiration for the fictionalized town of Dillon, Texas. The football team name did, however, retain the Panthers name. Berg made a number of these conscious choices in carrying elements from the film to the series and as such much of the work that went into the creation of the pilot was duplication of the work that was done on the movie.^[6] Other of these choices include casting Connie Britton and Brad Leland in similar roles,^[7]^[8] and using Explosions in the Sky, a band that wrote most of the film's soundtrack^[9], for the theme song and situational music. With this conception in hand, filming for the show's Austin, Texas-based pilot began in February 2006. Berg described filming the pilot and eventually the show in Texas as "a deal breaker" for his weekly participation in the project. Even so, the show features a number of homages to its Texas heritage. In filming the pilot, Berg ensured this homage by featuring Texas Longhorn coach Mack Brown as a Dillon booster and having a caller to the fictional “Panther Radio” compare Panthers' coach Eric Taylor to Brown.^[10] The pilot also incorporated much of the surrounding area. Football scenes for the pilot were filmed at Pflugerville High School's Kuempel Stadium and at the RRISD Complex. The Dillon Panther uniforms were based heavily on the uniforms of the real life Pflugerville Panthers.^[11] In addition to physical locations, characters in the show were also inspired by Berg’s observation of local high schools students while preparing for filming the movie. For example, Jason Street, the character whose promising football career is ended by a spinal injury in the pilot, was inspired by a real life incident in which David Edwards, a player from San Antonio’s Madison High, was paralyzed during a November 2003 game. Berg was at the game when the incident took place and it had a profound effect on him, leading him to base the pilot around a similar incident.^[12]

Performances

The show’s producers decided at the outset to allow their performers leeway in what they say and do on the show. Though scripted like any hour-long television drama performers are given great leeway in the delivery of their lines and the blocking of each scene. If actors feel that something is not true to their character or that a mode of delivery doesn’t work they are free to change it provided they still hit the vital plot points.^[13] The freedom that producers have extended to the performers is complemented by the fact that the show is taped without rehearsal and without extensive blocking. Camera operators on the show are trained to follow the actors rather than actors standing in one place and having cameras fixed around them. This allows performers to not only feel free to make changes but to feel safe in making those changes because the infrastructure will work around them. Executive producer Jeffrey Reiner described this method as “no rehearsal, no blocking, just three cameras and we shoot.”^[14] Working in this fashion has had a profound influence on everyone involved with the show with series star Kyle Chandler going so far as to say “When I look back at my life, I'm going to say, "Wow, [executive producer] Peter Berg really changed my life."”^[15] Executive producer and head writer Jason Katims echoes this sentiment saying “When I first came on [the ‘FNL’] set, I thought, it’s interesting — this is what I imagined filmmaking would be, before I saw what filmmaking was.”^[16]

Filming

Both seasons of Friday Night Lights have been filmed in and around Austin, Texas, despite discussions at the close of the first season about a possible move to New Mexico or Arizona. Representing roughly $33 million a year in revenue for the area in which its filmed, both were aggressive in courting the production company following Texas not paying all of the rebates they promised the show's producers.^[17] The show remained in Austin, however, as a result of Texas passing legislation to match the offers of other states and the production company having a preference to stay in the Austin area.^[18] Friday Night Lights is unusual in its use of actual locations as opposed to prefabricated stage sets and its lack of any sound stage for filming. This, along with the production team using hundreds of locals as extras, gives the series a uniquely authentic look.

The drive towards authenticity continues in the show’s documentary style filming technique which employs three cameras for each shoot and shoots entire scenes in one take. This differs from most productions in that most productions will film scenes from each angle repeating an average scene several times and readjusting lighting to accommodate each shot. The show is mostly improvised and scenes in the show are usually the first takes. By filming a scene all at once, the producers have tried to create an environment for the actors that is more organic and allows for the best performances. This desire for authenticity in the production extends to the football games as well with the series making heavy use of the uniforms, cheerleaders, fans, and the stadium of the real life Pflugerville Panthers. Producers even go so far as to video Pflugerville games and use them as game footage in the show.^[19] Added to that are real life University of Southern California football announcers Peter Arbogast and Paul McDonald who provide off-screen commentary during the football game sequences. The facilities, colors, and bobcat logos of Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas serve as the setting and creative inspiration for the fictional Texas Methodist University.

Marketing

Initial marketing of the show was targeted at the youth market and focused heavily on the football element. NBC teamed with social networking site Bebo.com to create a site that allowed students to upload video and photos as well as create blogs about their local football teams. Students who participated were eligible for one of ten $5,000 scholarships. The focus of this promotion was a deal that would provide NBC and the show promotion on Bebo’s network of youth oriented sites including Piczo, hi5, Tickle, Ringo and FastWeb.^[20]

Promotional Website with Toyota.

To complement this promotion NBC sent out “School Spirit” kits to 1,000 high schools around the country. These kits included posters, pop-poms, mini-footballs and disposable cameras all bearing the show’s logo. The kits also contained copies of the show’s Pilot episode on DVD.^[21] This promotional trick is something the network would return to for its second season promotion when it teamed with HouseParty.com to send out 1,000 "Party Kits" which contained advance copies of the Season 2 opener along with other promotional material.^[22] In addition to the Bebo.com partnership, NBC paired with Toyota to create what they called the “Hometown Sweepstakes” in which students could earn cash grants of up to $50,000 for their school’s athletic program. This contest was open to high school students age 14 to 18 and was designed to draw people to the show’s official web site where they could download AOL Instant Messenger Icons, screensavers, and desktop wallpaper from the show. In addition, students that registered could download free movie theatre passes to special early screenings of the show’s Pilot episode. These movie theatre screenings took place in 50 cities nationwide and ran until a week before the show premiered on NBC.^[23] This early strategy caused several marketing problems for the long term the most notable of which is the lack of women viewers. The early marketing campaign created an audience of almost exclusively young men and all but repelled women with its football heavy slant. This in turn deprived the show of a large audience who would enjoy the more character-driven soap elements. Given this dilemma NBC chose to aggressively switch course and pursue the female demographic in the later part of the season. The network designed a strategy based around accentuating the personal elements of the show even going so far as to rechristen the show with the tagline “It’s about life”. NBC Marketing President Vince Manze stresses that their goal was to let people know it was not just about football but about family and relationships as well. The network even chose to once again take their case to movie theatres by running 30 second spots featuring both cast members and fans being interviewed about the show.^[24]

Distribution

Online Episodes

NBC has been aggressive in its online promotion of Friday Night Lights. Streaming videos such as cast interviews and full episode from the previous week have been available on NBC.com since the series’ inception and in December of 2006 NBC expanded this selection to include every episode of the season. The move to offer every episode was only made for a few select shows and represents a marketing push on NBC's part.^[25] Beyond NBC.com it was announced on March 14, 2007 that the show would be part of an expanded lineup available via MobiTV.^[26] In addition to the free ad-support offerings every episode of Friday Night Lights became available for download on the iTunes Store on February 10, 2007 for $1.99 per episode. As a special promotion the pilot was initially offered as a free download^[27]

Repeat Schedule

In an attempt to bolster series ratings NBC repositioned reruns of the show to air on its sister network Bravo during the weeks leading up to the season one finale on NBC. These were aired on a schedule of one hour every Friday and three hours every Saturday. Bravo is known to have an audience that is upscale and largely female which is in line with NBC's then President Kevin Reilly’s (now at FOX) new strategy for selling the show.^[28] When questioned about this strategy he admitted to regrets over initially marketing the show incorrectly saying “It’s been so clear to me that [the marketing for] the show ended up confusing people in terms of what [the public thought] it was supposed to be”. He goes on to say that he feels the show is, at its core, a “women’s show” and that his wish is that the marketing had reflected that to a greater extent.^[29] NBC has used this method of ratings-bolstering with limited success in the past, most notably during the ratings challenged final season of the West Wing.^[30] Once the 2006-2007 television season ended, NBC planned to air reruns throughout the summer in the hopes of gaining new viewers during the summer hiatus. Despite rising ratings for the reruns, NBC abruptly pulled them from the network's schedule on June 24, 2007. NBC Representatives confirmed that reruns would resume airing in late August/early September and would be timed to the DVD release of Season 1.^[31]

Deleted Scenes

As part of their online push for the show NBC has made the rare move of publishing deleted scenes from each individual episode on their web site. Normally, deleted scenes are held until for an eventual DVD release but NBC/Universal has chosen to make them viewable online for a few of the shows that they produce.^[32] These scenes often provide information that is revealed later in the episode or series. An example of this is a scene from the episode entitled "I Think We Should Have Sex" in which it is established that the character of Walt Riggins has resumed living in the same house as his son Tim. The scene, while providing exposition on the relationship, serves only to establish a living arrangement which is made evident in subsequent scenes (which were aired)^[33] That said, the exposition given in a deleted scene can often change the intent of material that aired such as in a deleted scene from the episode "Blinders". In the episode that aired the character of Tim Riggins gives some prejudicial advice in regards to racial tension that is developing on the team. Only in the deleted scenes is it revealed that this advice was actually taken verbatim from advice his father had given to him and not necessarily what the character would have done had he not been trying to emulate his father^[34]

DVD Release

The DVD release of the first season was made available on August 28, 2007 for a retail price of $29.98.^[35]

DVD cover	Season	Episodes	Originally aired	Discs	DVD release date
DVD cover	Season	Episodes	Originally aired	Discs	Region 1	Region 2
	1	22	2006-2007	5	U.S./CAN: August 28, 2007	UK: October 29, 2007
	Running Time: 955 minutes Rating: NR^[36] DVD Special Features: 5 single-sided DVDs Anamorphic Widescreen (1.78:1) English Dolby Digital 5.1 Subtitles: English SDH Running Time: 14 Hours, 7 Minutes Deleted Scenes on each disc Behind The Lights: Creating The First Season of Friday Night Lights Packaging: Digipak with Slip Sleeve^[37]

Plot

Characters

Main article: List of Friday Night Lights characters

As a show about the community of Dillon, Texas and how the football team effects the town as a whole, Friday Night Lights has a ensemble cast. While screen time of characters varies from episode to episode, the show is most focused on Panthers' football coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler), who strives to balance his emphasis on family, his status in a sometimes confrontational community, and his personal ambitions. His family of wife Tami Taylor (Connie Britton), a guidance counselor at Dillon High, and teenage daughter Julie Taylor (Aimee Teegarden) also are in the center of the show. When Tami becomes pregnant and gives birth to Grace Taylor, tensions within the family increase and Julie becomes more rebellious than her earlier self. Outside of the Taylor family, the show focuses on the respective lives of the Dillon's high school football players. In the series' first episode, star quarterback Jason Street (Scott Porter) suffers an injury that leads to an end to his football career and a wheel chair-bound life which Jason resists and learns to cope with throughout the series. Lyla Garrity (Minka Kelly), who at the time of Jason's injury was his girlfriend, parallels his story, as she goes from a Panther cheerleader to a Christian youth minister. As a result of Jason's injury, shy and nervous Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford) becomes the Panthers' starting quarterback and eventually dates Julie. It is also revealed that Matt's father is serving in Iraq and that he must therefore care for his grandmother Lorraine Saracen (Louanne Stephens) by himself, with help only from his best friend Landry Clarke (Jesse Plemons) and eventual live-in nurse and love-interest Carlotta Alonso (Daniella Alonso). Obnoxious and arrogant star running-back Brian Smash Williams's (Gaius Charles) quest for a college-football scholarship and full-back Tim Riggins' (Taylor Kitsch) tale of on-and-off alcoholism and party-life are told as well. Tyra Collette (Adrianne Palicki) also stars as a town vixen who goes from Tim's occasional girlfriend to Landry's lover following Landry's defense of her from a rapist.

Story

See also: List of Friday Night Lights episodes

Season one

Main article: Friday Night Lights (season 1)

Season one revolves around two main events, the ascension of coach Eric Taylor to the position of head coach and the paralysis of star quarterback Jason Street. These two events set off a chain reaction that leads the series through its first season, a season that largely revolves around a few basic themes. The first of these themes is the overcoming of adversity. This is most evident in the juxtaposition of the team's new quarterback Matt Saracen and Jason Street who is now paralyzed from the chest down. Both characters must struggle against seemingly insurmountable odds as Street learns to live without the use of his legs and Saracen must rise to be worthy of the position he has now inherited. Both struggle mightily against their respective challenges and their journeys largely parallel each other as each eventually conquers those challenges. At the same time, a theme that repeats itself throughout the first season is the struggle Coach Taylor must face trying to balance the need to do the right thing with the need to appease a town whose hopes and dreams are inseparably intertwined with their high school football team. At several points Taylor must risk his team's success and consequently his job to do the right thing. Finally, the first season's overarching theme is that even seemingly stereotypical people have unknown depth; once that depth is revealed people generally aren’t as different as they believe themselves to be. Nowhere is this made clearer than in one of the season’s most volatile relationships, that of “Smash” Williams with Tim Riggins. Williams is a driven athlete, obviously college bound, with a good family, while Riggins is an unfocused alcoholic with absentee parents and no prospects beyond high school. When the season opens both characters despise each other but as it progresses they become more and more dependent on each other eventually forming a friendship. In doing so they realize that they aren't as different as they had once thought.

Public Reaction

Critical Reception

The tone or style of this article or section may not be appropriate for Wikipedia.
Specific concerns may be found on the . See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for suggestions.(December 2007)

The series debuted to strong critical reviews. Virginia Heffernan wrote for the New York Times that "if the season is anything like the pilot, this new drama about high school football could be great — and not just television great, but great in the way of a poem or painting."^[38] The Washington Post similarly praised the series as "[e]xtraordinary in just about every conceivable way."^[39] Bill Simmons, a columnist for ESPN Magazine implored readers of his column in the September 24, 2007 issue to watch the show, calling it "the greatest sports-related show ever made."^[40] Positive reviews also came from USA Today,^[41] the San Francisco Chronicle,^[42] the Arizona Republic,^[43] and the Boston Globe^[44] and international sources, with The Guardian's Jonathan Bernstien calling the pilot "accomplished and engaging" and the Metro awarding it 4 out of 5 stars.^[45] Throughout its inaugural season many online journalists used the frequency of their medium to heap regular praise on the show. Matt Roush of TV Guide dedicated several of his “Roush Dispatch” columns to the show calling the last episodes of season one “terrifically entertaining”^[46] while Zap2it.com's "TVGal" asked her readers to "promise to watch [the last 4 episodes of] Friday Night Lights."^[47] TV Guide's Michael Ausiello called the season one finale "predictably flawless."^[48] The show's pilot did, however, receive negative reviews as well. The Philadelphia Inquirer's review was particularly negative, calling the show a "standard high school sports soap opera." The Los Angeles Times and the Texas Monthly also were critical of the show.^[49]^[50] Season two reviews were considerably less positive than for for the first, with the Landry and Tyra murder receiving particular panning by critics. The Los Angeles Times said that in doing so the show had lost its innocence while the Boston Globe said the event was "out of sync with the real-life tone of the show." Others were more positive, though, with Variety saying "faith should be shown in showrunner/writer Jason Katims" while the New York Times said "to hold “Friday Night Lights” to a measure of realism would be to miss what are its essentially expressionistic pleasures."

Young members of the Friday Night Lights cast

Fan Response

Friday Night Lights is a show that has enjoyed what former NBC President Kevin Reilly dubbed a “passionate and vocal [fanbase]”. This fan dedication has shown itself in everything from advertisers expressing their support for the show^[51] to news outlets getting massive amounts of support mail after running positive pieces about the show.^[52] It has also led to the creation of several websites dedicated specifically to the show. These include the general information site FNL-online.com^[53] as well as several sites dedicated specifically to securing a second season for the show. Sites with this goal in mind include fightforlights.com^[54] which has collected positive press clippings about the show, savefridaynightlights.com^[55] which has organized an online petition for its renewal, and a MySpace page^[56] which includes video, audio and text about the show.

Awards & Nominations

The series and its creators have received several awards over the course of the series. By far the most prestigious of these is the George Foster Peabody award for broadcasting excellence which was awarded to the show for its first season where the award committee said “No dramatic series, broadcast or cable, is more grounded in contemporary American reality [than Friday Night Lights]."^[57]

Award Nominations & Wins

2006

American Cinema Editors - Best Editing on a One Hour Series for Commercial Television - for the episode "Pilot" ^[58] (WIN)
American Film Institute - 10 Best TV Programs of 2006 ^[59]

2007

Television Critics Association Award - Individual Achievement In Drama – Kyle Chandler
Television Critics Association Award - Individual Achievement In Drama – Connie Britton
Television Critics Association Award - Outstanding Achievement In Drama
Television Critics Association Award - Outstanding New Program of The Year (WIN)
Television Critics Association Award - Program Of The Year ^[60]
Writers Guild of America - Best New Series ^[61]
George Foster Peabody Award - Award for Broadcast Excellence ^[62]
Emmy Award - Outstanding Directing For A Drama Series - Peter Berg for the episode "Pilot" ^[63]
Emmy Award - Outstanding Casting For A Drama Series - Imagine Television, Film 44, NBC Universal Television Studio (WIN) ^[64]
American Film Institute - 10 Best TV Programs of 2007

2008

People's Choice Awards - Favorite Song from a Soundtrack - "Read My Mind," The Killers
Writers Guild of America - Best Dramatic Series

Television Ratings

U.S. Ratings

Main article: Friday Night Lights (U.S. Ratings)

Friday Night Lights has not met with much ratings success having consistently placed below 50 in the Nielsen rankings.^[65]

International Ratings

According to the Media Guardian (a UK newspaper) the show's pilot, which aired on February 21, 2007, was watched by a mere 26,000 viewers in the UK. This is attributed to the program airing on ITV4, the least viewed ITV channel, and being aired opposite the first leg of the Barcelona-Liverpool tie in the first knockout round of the 2006-07 UEFA Champions League in soccer.^[66]

DVR ratings

On December 29, 2006 Nielsen Media Research reported the results of having, for the first time, monitored viewers who use a Digital Video Recorder to pre-record shows for later viewing. These ratings, called "live plus seven", include all viewers who use a DVR to record the show and then watch it within a week of its initial airing. According to the Nielsen numbers, DVR viewers increased Friday Night Lights ratings by 7.5% overall in December.^[67] When Nielsen monitored viewers again in April of 2007 the increase went up to 17% for the week ending on April 8th.^[68] These numbers are up to some debate though with Medialife Magazine reporting the "live-plus-seven-day" rating for Friday Night Lights as 35 percent higher than its live rating in DVR homes.^[69]

Affluent Viewers

On March 5, 2007 Media Life Magazine reported that Friday Night Lights is one of the most popular shows among "affluent viewers". This was determined using a report from Magna Global who in turn used analysis done by Nielsen Media Research. Affluence in the study was determined by yearly income. In the study, Friday Night Lights tied for the 11th most watched show by affluent viewers. According to the study viewers of the show make an average of $65,000 per year.^[70]