E-mail me right now with your address if you are serious about saving Friday Night Lights and I will buy the first two worthy e-mailers the first season on DVD. It will be shipped to you unopened.
GO.
Most of this is a post I wrote fro the pro blog, but I do want to add something that I’m saying specifically to people I know:
You bastards never gave Friday Night Lights a chance. You know who I’m talking to. I can’t push the damn show any harder without being 100% dick instead of just 60% dick. I’m sorry if it seemed I was being anti-social bring up FNL when we could have “done something,” but you guys really don’t understand how good this show is.
I wrote a plea for you guys to watch the show a little less than a year ago, and I’m doing it again.
From the pro blog:
We now this isn’t exactly breaking news for all of you, but tonight is the last scripted episode of Friday Night Lights on NBC, possibly ever.
Although things are looking up in strike land, things have never looked up for Friday Night Lights. It limped through it’s masterpiece first season with barely any viewers because of a marketing misfire. When the show came out, it was marketed as a football show, then as a woman’s soap opera, and then as a bland drama.
FNL never found it’s advertising niche, and – as a result – the best show on network broadcast television is about to take a nosedive into non-existence.
People pimp Lost and 24 as huge cultural obsessions, but they pander to wide audiences and serialize larger than life plots.
Friday Night Lights has always been about the people and the community of fictional Dillon, Texas.
When it debuted in October 2006, the New York Times said of Friday Night Lights: “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, great in the way of art with a single obsessive creator who doesn’t have to consult with a committee and has months or years to go back and agonize over line breaks and the color red; it could belong in a league with art that doesn’t have to pause for commercials, or casually recap the post-commercial action, or sell viewers on the plot and characters in the first five minutes, or hew to a line-item budget, or answer to unions and studios, or avoid four-letter words and nudity.”
Now, Radar has a piece form last week where they asked NBC Universal shot-caller Ben Silverman about FNL and he sounded really down about the chances of the show seeing life after the writer’s strike.
Quick question! A lot of us are happy that you’ve kept Friday Night Lights on the air despite lousy ratings. It’s totally the best show on TV. But is there going to be another season?
Silverman: Do you watch 30 Rock? That’s the best show on TV.Not regularly. But what about FNL?
Start watching 30 Rock. It’s the best show on TV.I don’t want to watch 30 Rock. I want to watch FNL. I love it.
I love it. You love it. Unfortunately, no one watches it. That’s the thing with shows. People have to watch them. We’re NBC, we have a reputation to uphold. And, man, with this writers’ strike … well, we’ll see what we can do. But start watching 30 Rock.
We can’t watch 30 Rock, Ben, but you have been nice enough to keep both the first and second seasons completely online, and even though the writers are not yet getting residuals on it, it’s the last chance to save their jobs on the best show on broadcast television.
Go watch Season One’s first two episodes and tell us we’re wrong. Then we’ll just weep after tonight’s episode all the more.
And their will be weeping, because we’ll be saying goodbye to the hot women of Dillon, Tim Riggins and the Taylor family who gave us a thrilling ride to the state championship last year.
We’ll be telling people about this series until our DVDs wear out.
We aren’t the only ones pissed that tonight might be the last Friday Night Lights EVER.
Now that everyone else on the internet has had time to wake up (losers), the nets have lit up with Friday Night Lights!
Best Week Ever writes:
When asked outright if he plans to keep FNL on the air, NBC President Ben Silverman smugly told Radar Magazine to “watch 30 Rock”, then continued to stroke the peacock feathers of FNL’s more successful sibling series by declaring 30 Rock to be “the best show on TV”. When further pressed about the original question, Silverman bemoaned the fact that “no one watches Friday Night Lights”. Well Ben, maybe its because you’re telling everyone to watch 30 Rock, which is indeed a great show, but is there some new NBC policy stating you can only have one quality series at a time and everything else has to be American Gladiators chasing down Biggest Losers? Sounds like someone could use a stern talking-to from Coach Taylor. Clear eyes, full hearts, Silverman!
Entertainment Weekly has a good piece about another unspoken option for the series: moving it to another network that doesn’t have Ben Silverman running it. Namely, one of NBCs sister networks on cable.
Then again, they also have a bleak outlook on the fate of the halted second season. If the writer’s strike ends by the 15th and NBC give FNL the go-ahead, the writers and cast are ready to finish the season. Sadly, that probably won’t happen, according to executive producer Jason Katims. As of right now, Katims has no plans to write the final episode as a series finale. “I would do it as a cliffhanger and leave things open-ended unless of course we were told that the show was ending,” he says. “But I doubt that would be the case because if they bring the show back to do more episodes this season, they’re also going to be hoping that the show returns for a third season.”
Finally, Best Week Ever has even formed a Dillon Panthers Booster Club!
BestWeekEver.tv is willing to use our site as a platform to lend support to those who share our interest in keeping this vital series alive. Our Dillon Panthers Booster Club will be providing the Friday Night Lights fan community with regular updates on the status of the show’s fate, creating our own original content to help raise awareness about the great television so many people have been missing, and providing a place where the fans of the Dillon Panthers will have their message to NBC heard more loudly and clearly: “Keep The Lights ON!”
Currently, there is a petition and a Jericho-esque mailing campaign.
Lets go people! Watch the show online like we suggested then save the Lights!
CLEAR EYES, FULL HEARTS, CAN’T LOSE