"Friday Night" "Lights" up DirecTV

Here's an interesting business model: Find a show with crummy ratings and then become a co-producer on it, and show it on your satellite network that only has 17.1 million subscribers nationwide.

I'm not sure how that helps anyone, really, except the cast and crew of a show that'd probably be cancelled otherwise. But it explains why the critically acclaimed "Friday Night Lights" will be premiering on DirecTV's 101 Network tonight.

DirecTV's Eric Shanks explains how this works for them: "It was the perfect show to really start to execute a content strategy based around high quality, premium entertainment. DirecTV believes in delivering a unique content experience to its customers with the goal of retaining our existing customers and trying to attract new customers. So 'Friday Night Lights' was the absolute perfect fit: It's the most upscale drama on television and it's adored by a loyal group of very passionate fans. The goal for us isn't necessarily to be a huge ratings hit, because we've chosen not to sell commercials. Instead, we're going to look to find those passionate niches. ...

"Halfway through the season, we'll go back and do research with the customers who joined during that period to find out if 'Friday Night Lights' had an effect. This is the start of this premium content strategy for us - there's no particular number that we have in mind, we just need to find out if this strategy is going to start to resonate with people."

After each episode, for the show's most obsessive fans, they'll present "Live from Dillon," featuring interviews with cast members (successful series don't get their own talk shows!). The season will run 13 episodes and focus more on football again rather than murder like it did last season. It'll show up on NBC next year, to, likely, worse ratings that it had last season. But I guess we'll see just how passionate those fans are. Remember how all those "Jericho" fans besieged CBS with peanuts and then when the show came back almost no one watched?

DirecTV sent me a "Friday Night Lights" screener, but it was for next week's episode, not tonight's. Go figure. Maybe we'll discuss it next week.

- "Friday Night Lights:" 9 p.m., 101 Network (DirecTV subscribers only).