Friday Night Lights Turns Up Online, With Glitches

Written by Frank Smith

Friday, April 4. 2008 at 03:45 PM EDT Post a comment

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NBC Universal and DirecTV Group Inc. (NYSE: DTV) have signed a unique agreement for the third season of Friday Night Lights. But just as this deal was being announced, full-length episodes of the drama about a high-school football team in a small Texas town disappeared briefly from Hulu LLC .

A Hulu spokesperson cited an "unexpected internal systems issue [which caused] the shows to disappear." Clips were still available during the outage. Hulu says full-length episodes are now back up and running.

The first two seasons of Friday Night Lights are available to watch on Hulu and on NBC.com where the video quality and functions are less refined.

Starting in October, new episodes will be broadcast on DirecTV's "The 101" channel at 9:00 p.m. EST on Friday nights. NBC viewers will have to wait until 2009 after the Super Bowl to catch these episodes as they air. Once broadcast on NBC, these episodes will then appear on NBC.com and Hulu.

HBO has tested out new season launches via new delivery methods. Earlier this year, the final season of The Wire premiered a week early for On-Demand subscribers.

The critically acclaimed show was on the verge of cancellation due to low ratings, but by giving DirecTV exclusive rights to air new episodes, Friday Night Lights will get its third season. Airing the show on NBC starting in February 2009 is part of the network's revamped 52-week TV schedule, whereby new seasons of its shows will be interspersed throughout the year rather than launching each fall.

NBC's co-chair Ben Silverman said earlier: "We're all about quality TV at NBC Universal and we're beyond thrilled that we have structured an innovative deal that allows us to continue to produce and air this beloved series."

Translation: NBC needed to kick up some extra cash to keep the struggling show on the air and is testing out new strategies and platforms to launch its shows.