Best Week Ever » Save Friday Night Lights

…OF THE DAY

Alex Blagg — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 23:00:51 +0000

PROTEST: Friday Night Lights isn’t the only great show on television in need of saving. Shave your head and send your hair to ABC to Save Cavemen. (Vulture)
COMING OF AGE: Jews have Mitzvahs. Christians have Super Sweet Sixteen Parties. Hiltons have too much to drink and get arrested for DUI. The circle of life continues. (TMZ)
COLLECTION PLATE: The Passion of the Christ screenwriter is suing Mel Gibson for back-end profits he claims to have not yet received. He apparently must have some kind of problem with being paid in prayers. (Defamer)
SHAKESPEARE: Get the Best Screenplay Oscar ready, because Michael Bay announced that he has written Transformers 2. WITH HIS D*CK! (ComingSoon)
IGNORE REQUEST: Bill Gates has quit using his Facebook account, probably because it’s difficult to run a 40 billion-a-year company while spending so much of your time biting chumps. (Fimoculous)

LIGHTS ON: Get Your Dillon Panthers Yard Signs!

Alex Blagg — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:30:55 +0000

[Remember - stay tuned to the Dillon Panthers Booster Club, sign our petition to Save Friday Night Lights, and send light bulbs to NBC as a symbol of your support.]

Join our ongoing effort to save Friday Night Lights by grabbing one of these banner graphics we’ve created and pasting it into your blog or MySpace page in order to help us spread the word and get more names added to our growing petition. Think of them as Dillon Panthers yard signs, but for the Internet.

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LIGHTS ON: The Top 5 Reasons NBC Shouldn’t Cancel Friday Night Lights

Alex Blagg — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 19:18:25 +0000

[Remember - stay tuned to the Dillon Panthers Booster Club, sign our petition to Save Friday Night Lights, and send light bulbs to NBC as a symbol of your support.]

5. Ratings Aren’t Everything – Because of NBC’s commitment to ridiculous literalism, Friday Night Lights airs on Friday nights, which as you may have realized, isn’t the biggest “stay home and watch the tube” evening of the week, meaning that many of the people who love and watch the show (myself included) do so on our DVR’s. Additionally, as many people were late to the party on this one, one has to factor in all the people currently catching up with NBC’s full episodes streaming online who will be as die-hard about new episodes of the show as soon as the next season start. And considering that FNL was one of the only shows still available to content-hungry viewers in the latter weeks of the writers strike, I would be willing to bet that the fanbase the show needs to breakthrough its ratings barrier will be in place at the beginning of the 3rd season, should NBC be wise enough to give it one.

4. Canceling Right Now Would Be An Act Of Cruelty – I wouldn’t call where we’re at right now a cliffhanger. If this were to be the end of the series, it would feel more like a suicidal swan dive into an infinite abyss of broken-hearted frustration. I realize that, in the existential sense, life never guarantees the answers to our many questions, but come on, we’ve got an ensemble cast of characters and storylines a lot of people have spent over 40 hour-long episodes becoming emotionally invested in. You have to give us something. Hell, even other canceled cult series like Arrested Development and Freaks & Geeks knew their fate far enough in advance to wrap things up a bit. Never getting to find out how the Panthers season ends, or whether Riggins ever tricks Lyla back into bed with him, or if Coach’s Daughter ever grows up and stops being a spoiled brat? That’s just cruel.

Read the Top 3 Reasons, after the jump!

3. The Show’s Potential Audience Is Infinite – Friday Night Lights’ failure to catch on with the TV-watching masses is a clear testament to the way its been mishandled and poorly promoted by NBC. I mean, it’s an intelligently-produced show about ridiculously attractive high school kids playing football, having life dramas, and dealing with their small town friends and family, all of whom are also ridiculously attractive. What’s not to like? It literally appeals to everyone. Personally, I couldn’t care less about sports or the small-town subject matter, but the quality of the show’s writing – some of the best on television – elevates rural American inanity to high art without ever feeling elitist or “high-brow”. It’s too bad NBC continually fails to realize they’re sitting on a potential for broad audience appeal that could make The Office look like a cult hit.

2. A Cast Full of Rising Stars – One of the things that makes FNL such an amazing show is its stellar cast. From Riggins to Street, Lyla to Landry, Saracen to Smash, Coach Taylor to Buddy Garrity, the actors all possess an iconic quality that transcends TV characterization, instead bringing their roles to life on-screen in ways that make them seem as vivid and familiar to us as our friends and family. And being so easy on the eyes, almost any of the members of the FNL ensemble could become crossover movie stars, which means one thing for NBC should they leave the show on the air: ratings.

1. Because There’s Currently Not Enough Good TV To Cancel A Great Show – Maybe an incredibly-written drama with great actors playing compelling characters won’t ever pull down the big “steroid abusers in spandex fighting each other with nerf sticks” ratings of American Gladiators, but given the care and promotional consideration NBC reserves for shows like the one about whose dad is the best, Friday Night Lights will finally find an audience more indicative of its quality.

LIGHTS ON: Send Light Bulbs To NBC To Save Friday Night Lights

Alex Blagg — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 18:50:42 +0000

The Official Motto of the Dillon Panthers Booster Club is Keep The Lights On, and what better way to get that point across to NBC than by taking a moment to send them a light bulb as a reminder that it’s a “good idea” to keep great shows on their network. NBC-Universal is owned by General Electric anyway, so these light bulbs will also be like little bribes, putting our whole campaign in a more financial context these studio types will be able to better understand. Light bulbs are cheap, easy to come by, and if they break during shipping, the shattered glass might even seem vaguely threatening when NBC opens the package. Sort of like, “You try to take away our Panthers, and we might just cut you.” So grab a bulb, write “Lights On” on the side of it, and send it to NBC honcho Ben Silverman at:

Ben Silverman
c/o NBC Studios
3000 W. Alameda Ave.
Burbank, CA. 91523

If you feel like shelling out a bit more or you’re a stoner with lots of eye drops lying around, you could send Clear Eyes as well.

Go to the Booster Club, sign the petition, and send FNL-related tips to info@bwe.tv. Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose.

CHALK TALK: The Future Of Friday Night Lights

Alex Blagg — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 17:44:00 +0000

(Keep checking in on our Dillon Panthers Booster Club, and if you haven’t already, sign the petition to keep Friday Night Lights on the air. Send any tips, ideas or support to info@bwe.tv)

Tonight is the final episode Friday Night Lights was able to complete this season before the Writers Strike shut down work on new scripts. While NBC has yet to formally announce the fate of the show after tonight, here is the latest word from around the web.

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!

If that’s the grim future FNL is facing in the NBC family, does our neglected orphan series stand any chance of being adopted by a warmer, more understanding foster home network? Entertainment Weekly takes a look at the chances of NBC shopping the show around to a competitor or one of its own sister cable networks. Personally, I don’t care if they put the show on PAX at 4am on Tuesdays, canceling a young show of such rare quality because its not pulling down the same ratings as “People Shouting At Suitcases With Howie Mandel” is unsportsmanlike conduct towards viewers.

Finally, E! Online makes their own passionate plea to save the series with a list of 3 things you can do to help KEEP THE LIGHTS ON.

Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose!

BWE’s Official Petition To Save Friday Night Lights

Alex Blagg — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 23:00:20 +0000

In a primetime TV landscape dominated by reality shows and reheated cliche, every so often a television series of superior accomplishment and rare originality comes along and challenges our conception of the quality of entertainment we can expect from network television. Shows like Arrested Development, Firefly, and Freaks & Geeks, to name a few. And when these special miracles do come down from the TV heavens and find their way into the hearts of viewers hungry for programming that’s actually worthy of their precious time, the ratings-focused studio Lords who giveth always seem to taketh away.

NBC’s critically-acclaimed but woefully under-watched hour-long drama series Friday Night Lights is the next great series facing cancellation far before its time. If industry rumors are to be believed, tomorrow night’s final episode of FNL‘s strike-shortened season could very well be its last, ever.

As fans of the show, and the kind of exciting television it represents, 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!”

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