How "Friday Night Lights" Was Saved

In ABC's 2005-2006 network television season, "Lost" became the ratings holy grail. When the show was first introduced, it was a breath of fresh air, a conceptual breakthrough. There was no other show like it: a science fiction soap opera with a dark philosophical mystery running throughout. Was it a religious allegory with the plane crash survivors actually dead and trying to make their way out of purgatory? Or was it a sci-fi spin on H.G. Wells "Island of Dr. Moreau"? Or was this a vision of a character in a coma struggling to revive back to reality? It didn't matter. The viewers were intrigued and it was reflected in the ratings.

In the television business, when a network takes a creative risk like this, the risk either results in bloody failure or a smash hit. "Lost" was a smash hit. And, as with all television conceptual breakthroughs that become smash hits, copycats were sure to follow. And they did in the 2006-2007 television season. Each network came up with its own hand-full of character-driven serialized long-story-arc series. "Friday Night Lights" was one those new shows that fit the "Lost" success formula.

However, what all the networks didn't see coming was a large ratings dip for "Lost" during a 2006 show hiatus that broke the long thread of the story arc, making it difficult for viewers to get back on track when the show came back. Another problem was that viewers were losing patience with the prolonged mystery. It began to appear as if the show's writers were making it all up as they went along, vamping by padding the story arc with new characters with new back-stories told in flashback.