se-alum;772594 wrote:Friday Night Lights is actually on Friday night isn't it?? I'm surprised it made it that long in that time slot. Usually the only shows that do well on Friday nights are family shows like the TGIF shows.
Also, I think think the internet(Hulu,Netflix) have led to alot of shows being cancelled before their time. I watch everything on Hulu since the Reds are typically playing during the week, and I think that hurts viewership while the show is actually on.
I believe that the final three seasons of
FNL aired on Fridays on NBC, but the first two years (when the show was only on NBC) I believe that it was on Tuesdays. Part of the reason it got moved to Fridays was because a lot of people thought it was odd to have a showed called
Friday Night Lights airing on a Tuesday. Also, since the show was now on NBC in the spring instead of the fall it wouldn't be going up against actual high school football. When the episodes premiered on Direct TV 101 the show aired on Wednesday nights. The night that the show was on had very little to do with it's lack of audience.
I think there are several reasons that NBC worked out the deal they did with Direct TV to keep the show on the air after it's second season. First, Pete Berg, who made the movie, was also producing the show and was really passionate about seeing it continue. Two, I think that NBC realized that it wasn't going to ever draw huge viewers, but they thought it would do well in DVD sales and in syndication. Unfortunately, the syndication rights were sold to ABC family a few years ago and I don't even think it ran a full season before it got canned. I just think that the football scares a lot of potential viewers away, even though the football is the just canvas, not the paint.
Friday night hasn't been a night for family shows since TGIF ended in 2000. Recently it's been for reality shows, supernatural shows (Medium and Ghost Whisperer), and news magazines. ABC airs Shark Tank, Primetime, and 20/20; CBS airs Flashpoint, CSI: NY, and 48 Hours Mystery; and NBC has FNL and Dateline. Families don't stay home and watch TV on Friday nights like they did in the 1990's. Programming is now geared more towards an older (45+) crowd.