The series follows a high school football team in the fictional town of Dillon, a small, close-knit community in rural West Texas.

The show uses its small-town backdrop to address many issues in contemporary American culture like family values, school funding, racism, substance use, abortion and lack of economic opportunities.

Although the show had garnered critical acclaim and passionate fans, the series suffered low ratings and was in danger of cancellation after the second season.

[3][4][5] Though Friday Night Lights never garnered a sizable audience,[6] it was a critical success, lauded for its realistic portrayal of Middle America and deep exploration of its central characters.

Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton also scored multiple nominations for the Outstanding Lead Actor and Actress awards for a drama series.

The book, which explores the 1988 season of the Permian Panthers, a high school football team in Odessa, Texas, was a factual work of documentary journalism.

[8] The Universal Pictures film, which stars Billy Bob Thornton and was directed by Peter Berg, Bissinger's second cousin, based its characters on the residents of Odessa, c. 1988.

[10] He cast Connie Britton as the wife of head coach Eric Taylor, and Brad Leland as Buddy Garrity, a major businessman and football booster, in roles similar to those they played in the film.

Berg said he required filming the pilot and eventually the show in Texas as "a deal breaker" in order to agree to participate weekly in the project.

For example, Jason Street, the character whose promising football career is ended by a spinal injury in the pilot, was inspired by a local event.

If the actors felt that something was untrue to their character or a mode of delivery didn't work, they were free to change it, provided they still hit the vital plot points.

[25] NBC also paired with Toyota to create the "Hometown Sweepstakes", in which students could earn cash grants of up to $50,000 for their school's athletics program.

It was open to high school students ages 14 to 18 and was designed to draw people to the show's official website, where they could download AOL Instant Messenger icons, screensavers and desktop wallpaper.

NBC Marketing President Vince Manze stressed that the goal was to assure viewers that the show was family and relationships as well as athletics.

The show features Panthers' football coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler), who strives to balance his work, family, status in a sometimes confrontational community and his personal ambitions.

In the pilot, Coach Taylor's protege and star quarterback Jason Street (Scott Porter) suffers an in-game spinal injury that ends his football career.

The fourth season introduces several new characters, including Vince Howard (Michael B. Jordan), a talented athlete who has never played football before, but he rises to stardom as the team's quarterback.

Jess Merriweather (Jurnee Smollett) is also an East Dillon student who shows aspirations of being a football coach; while working at her father's restaurant, she cares for her three younger brothers and briefly dates Landry before starting a relationship with Vince.

"[31] Positive reviews also came from USA Today,[32] the San Francisco Chronicle,[33] and international sources, with The Guardian's Jonathan Bernstien calling the pilot "beautifully shot" and the Metro awarding it 4 out of 5 stars.

"[37][38] Others were more positive, though, with Variety saying "faith should be shown in showrunner/writer Jason Katims" while The New York Times said "to hold Friday Night Lights to a measure of realism would be to miss what are its essentially expressionistic pleasures.

The show's two leading actors, Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton, received Emmy nominations for their performances in 2010, while executive producer Jason Katims won two Humanitas Prize awards for writing.

[7] Friday Night Lights enjoys what former NBC President Kevin Reilly called a "passionate and vocal [fanbase]".

[17] After some statements made by NBC's Entertainment head Ben Silverman about the future of the show and the fact that everything seemed to point that Friday Night Lights wouldn't return after the writers' strike, fans put together several campaigns.

These ratings, called "live plus seven", include all viewers who use a DVR to record the show and then watch it within a week of its initial airing.

[69] On March 5, 2007, Media Life Magazine reported that Friday Night Lights was one of the most popular shows among "affluent viewers" who had little experience playing football.

[74] ABC Family acquired syndication rights for the first four seasons and began airing reruns September 6, 2010,[75] but it was pulled on October 18, 2010, due to low ratings.

Bravo is known to have an audience that is upscale and largely female, which is in line with the new strategy of NBC's then-President Kevin Reilly (now at FOX) for selling the show.

[92] Special features include deleted scenes from several episodes, audio commentaries for "Don't Go" and "Always", a featurette titled "The Lights Go Out", and a photo gallery.

[94] In March 2016, it was announced that Mill Creek Entertainment had acquired the rights to the series in region 1; they subsequently re-released the first two seasons on DVD on September 6, 2016.

The first, Friday Night Lights, was released in 2007, and included music from The Killers, OutKast, and Explosions in the Sky, who had produced the score for the film.