"Friday Night Lights" is one of those shows, one hears, that you gotta see. Really, you just don't know what you're missing.
Like "Arrested Development," "30 Rock" and "The Wire" were, "Friday Night Lights" has been thoroughly stamped with that label of "critically adored, low-rated."
When executive producer and head writer Jason Katims tells people what he does for a living, people usually say: "Oh yeah. I hear that's a great show."
"I get that response all the time," he says. "There are people that have heard it's a great show but don't watch."
But there is hope for "Friday Night Lights" and other excellent but low-rated programs. Shows with passionate, niche audiences are proving to be more valuable than they once were.
The third season of "Friday Night Lights" premieres Friday on NBC after the network struck an unusual partnership with DirecTV that has kept the show alive. The satellite service aired the full season ahead of the broadcast premiere for its 17 million subscribers.
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"If this model works for our show, then it could work for other shows," said Katims. "That would be a great thing to be a part of."
"Friday Night Lights" is originally based on the 1990 book by H.G. Bissinger and focuses on a high school football team in Dillon, Texas. It's not your typical hour-long drama, though.
"Friday Night Lights" is ultimately about community — a community that lives through football, centered on the nucleus of the team coach (Kyle Chandler) and his wife (Connie Britton). The fluid approach allows the show to follow its many characters into their homes, into their lives.
It was first a 2004 movie, directed by Peter Berg, who then adapted it for the tube. It was first scheduled not on its namesake day, but Wednesday — and opposite "American Idol." For its second season, it was switched to Friday night, but ratings only improved to 6.2 million viewers after 5.9 million the previous season.
NBC chairman is a fan
After the writers strike abruptly ended the second season, the fate of "FNL" hung in the balance. Fans mobilized and mailed plastic footballs to NBC co-chairman Ben Silverman.
Silverman, though, was already a fan. When he attended last year's Sundance Film Festival, he met with his friend Eric Shanks, executive vice president for entertainment at DirecTV, and floated the idea of partnering on "Friday Night Lights," which NBC also produces.
"It just felt like a jewel and that it was a show that really had so many people passionate about it," said Silverman. "I only get yelled at, but we love these great shows."
Neither side will discuss how much DirecTV paid for the first rights to the third season, but Silverman calls it a "real, meaningful partnership" that has given the network "a larger tolerance" for low ratings from the show.
"For us, it has blown away our expectations as far as how it's performed from a ratings perspective," said Shanks. For the premiere episode, the show ranked seventh for DirecTV customers among all basic cable. (It was second among 18-49 year-old women.)
Shanks said the company has not yet researched how "Friday Night Lights" has affected subscriber numbers.
Silverman hopes "Friday Night Lights" on NBC will capitalize on the buzz from the DirecTV deal and the usual critical acclaim. (A critic for The New York Times has written: "I love `Friday Night Lights.'")
Skeptics wonder if the show's core audience has already seen season three, either on DirecTV or illegally online through BitTorrent.
"Our expectation is the show should not be in any way hurt from this experiment in terms of absolute ratings," said Silverman. "But we'll have to see. I don't know yet."
Whether "Friday Night Lights" survives to a fourth season or not, it's clear shows like it have more opportunities now.
DirecTV is also now offering all eight episodes of "Wonderland," the acclaimed ABC series that was canceled in 2000 after just two episodes. The satellite service could become a veritable Noah's Ark for endangered, cultish programs.
"It's kind of cool," said Shanks. "Now that people know we're open for business and know this one of the strategies we're going after, you can imagine the calls we're getting from producers and studios from all kinds of shows."
As network ratings are dwindling, television — and entertainment altogether — is becoming more of a niche business. And an ardent TV following can translate to revenue from DVDs, Web traffic and international sales.
"The DirecTV deal wouldn't have happened two to three or five years ago," said Katims, who knows something about canceled shows, having written for the short-lived ABC series "My So Called Life."
"It's happened because the landscape of network television is changing," he adds. "The numbers are decreasing and people have to pay attention to shows that have niche audiences."
Jason Kilar, chief executive officer of Hulu.com, the NBC Universal, News Corp. joint-effort, recently wondered in an interview if "Arrested Development" — the site's third most popular show — would have been canceled by Fox in 2006 if its popularity had been that evident three years ago.
"The fact that our audience is touching this content in a lot of places, it requires us to just be more entrepreneurial in how we can finance that content," said Silverman. "There are so many different partners that we have as a broadcaster and content company that can help offset our risk."
Though the plight of good, low-rated shows is unlikely to ease drastically, they might be more valuable commodities in an increasingly disperse TV landscape.
That would cheer even Grandma Saracen, the elderly grandmother of Panthers quarterback Matt Saracen on "Friday Night Lights." In an episode in the third season, she wonders why her beloved "Cagney & Lacey" isn't on anymore.
"It was a good show," she says. "I don't know why they quit the good shows and put these other shows on."
It's too late for "Cagney & Lacey," but it might not be for "Friday Night Lights."