from the new york times
DirecTV Deal Will Subsidize ‘Friday Night Lights’
By BRIAN STELTER
For television networks, it is a common quandary: what do you do about
a show that critics adore, that has a passionate base of fans, but
that consistently gets mediocre ratings?
NBC, for one, thinks it has a creative solution. Last week, it
announced a deal with DirecTV, a subscription satellite television
service, that would keep “Friday Night Lights” on the air for a third
season. DirecTV will help defray NBC’s production costs and in
exchange will receive the right to show “Friday Night Lights” first.
Television executives say this model could help keep other sentimental
favorites on the air. For instance, CBS Paramount Network Television
has held talks with Comcast, the cable provider, about finding new
life for “Jericho,” the low-rated drama canceled by CBS last month,
according to two people briefed on the talks who requested anonymity.
And Katherine Pope, the president of NBC’s production arm, Universal
Media Studios, said that other television distributors had also shown
interest in licensing the rights to specific shows.
From NBC’s perspective, “Friday Night Lights” did not draw enough of a
crowd to be continued. On average, about 6.1 million people tuned in
to it this season, but fans were loyal enough to send thousands of
mini-footballs to NBC to lobby for the show.
NBC knew it needed a partner, and an op****tunity arose in January when
Eric Shanks, the executive vice president for entertainment at
DirecTV, struck up a conversation with his friend Ben Silverman, the
co-chairman of NBC Entertainment. DirecTV licensed the rights to the
“first window” of the show, meaning that DirecTV subscribers will see
the new episodes four months before the broadcast audience.
A past DirecTV-NBC deal, the purchase of exclusive rights to the soap
opera “Passions,” fizzled after 12 months.
Executives would not disclose the new deal’s value, except to call it
“significant.” Each episode costs about $2 million to produce;
Universal Media Studios will produce 13 episodes this year.
Referring to the next season’s numbers, Mr. Silverman said: “If our
rating was just 15 percent lower, we would be doing so much better
through the way we structured this deal.”
NBC, part of the NBC Universal unit of General Electric, had several
cable channels seeking similar deals for “Friday Night Lights,” but
Mr. Silverman said they would have “cannibalized 90 percent of our
audience.” DirecTV, by contrast, is available in only 16.8 million
households, about 15 percent of NBC’s reach.
The show will have its debut on DirecTV on Oct. 1. It will move to NBC
sometime after the Super Bowl in early 2009. Mr. Shanks said DirecTV
hoped to sign up “tens of thousands of subscribers” through the
partner****p.
“If fans are passionate enough to ditch cable and come to DirecTV, we
can help keep shows alive,” Mr. Shanks said.
Broadcasters have previously shared shows with cable channels — but
not individual cable operators — to spread out some of the costs. The
NBC series “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” moved last fall to USA,
where episodes were shown before being used on NBC in the winter. USA
has yet to renew the show.
Jason Katims, an executive producer of “Friday Night Lights,” said
that DirecTV would be motivated to market the show extensively. As a
producer on a returning show, “you’re always kind of hoping for a new
marketing campaign, a relaunch, a new jolt of energy,” Mr. Katims
said. He said he was not expecting major changes to the show itself.
Skeptics of the NBC-DirecTV deal say that it could backfire if
impatient fans turn to the Internet to download illegal copies of
“Friday Night Lights” before it appears on NBC. The Web site Silicon
Alley Insider called the deal “a big win for BitTorrent,” referring to
a popular file-sharing program. Executives played down the risk of
that.
Television executives will be watching to see how the “Friday Night
Lights” arrangement plays out. It could show a new way for cable and
satellite operators to compete — differentiating themselves not by
price or channel lineups but by show selection.
Mr. Shanks of DirecTV said that his company had been talking about how
to distinguish itself through its programming for at least two years.
“We have exclusive content around s****ts with the N.F.L., college
basketball and Nascar,” he said. “Why can’t that same model work with
entertainment? Why can’t we go out and get exclusive entertainment
properties and use that as a differentiator as well?”
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