Roush on Friday Night Lights
Question: I was thrilled to see the deal NBC made to keep
Friday Night Lights on the air, particularly since I am already a DirecTV subscriber. But I wonder how you are going to cover the series. Do you follow the DirecTV showings as if they were on the network, thus potentially spoiling them for 90 percent of your audience? Or do you wait for the network showings, thus keeping the show under the radar, knowing it will probably kill both the show and any chance for more deals like this? As the models for broadcasting shows change (with deals such as the one for
L&O: CI and this one for
FNL), how will it impact the way you cover TV?
— Rick C.
Matt Roush: Excellent question, and I guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. But unlike cable or even pay cable, discussing episodes that are available only to a limited audience of satellite subscribers presents some interesting challenges. (I'm not sure at this point if the show will be available on streaming video or on downloads until it gets to NBC, but I imagine DirecTV will want to keep it relatively exclusive.) Depending on my own access to the episodes, I will probably choose to write about the show as it airs in its initial run, flagging certain discussions as spoilers if it would ruin things for those who have to wait for the NBC run. And then when it's on the broader NBC platform, I imagine we'll be discussing the show all over again, if not more so, sort of like what happened when Dexter began airing on CBS.
