{"id":323,"date":"2009-01-23T19:55:01","date_gmt":"2009-01-24T02:55:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/xsml\/?p=323"},"modified":"2009-01-23T19:55:01","modified_gmt":"2009-01-24T02:55:01","slug":"closed-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/2009\/01\/23\/closed-case\/","title":{"rendered":"closed case"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week I posted an email<\/a> I sent to NPR’s Fresh Air after its contributor David Bianculli went on a bizarre rant about NBC not supporting its program “Friday Night Lights” to his satisfaction.<\/p>\n

Today, NPR’s All Things Considered answered the question<\/a> Bianculli failed to ask: how does a show without an audience stay on broadcast television?<\/p>\n

Friday Night Lights premiered to great reviews three years ago. The story of a football-obsessed Texas town was praised for its realistic portrayal of lives in the American working and middle classes, which is a surprisingly hard thing to find these days on American television.<\/p>\n

But so is an audience.<\/p>\n

The critically acclaimed but little-watched drama was on the brink of cancellation until satellite-TV provider DirecTV recently threw the show a fiscal Hail Mary.<\/p>\n

“It seemed fairly certain the show would be canceled,” says series writer Jason Katims. “And what happened was, through what I consider to be a stroke of genius, they came up with this idea.”<\/p>\n

DirecTV was looking for a cheap way to bring an exclusive show to its lineup; NBC had a good show that wasn’t making any money.<\/p>\n

So DirecTV bought the rights to air the new season of Friday Night Lights first, before NBC did. And the network got money to prop up a program that was otherwise doomed. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I still marvel at how someone can be a television critic and willfully ignore how television gets made.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week I posted an email I sent to NPR’s Fresh Air after its contributor David Bianculli went on a bizarre rant about NBC not supporting its program “Friday Night Lights” to his satisfaction. Today, NPR’s All Things Considered answered the question Bianculli failed to ask: how does a show without an audience stay on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}