Friday Night Lights Ratings Show Improvement

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Heat of Battle
Its numbers weren't exactly high wattage, but NBC's Friday Night Lights opened its second season on a definite positive note on Friday night.

The premiere ("Last Days of Summer") of the critically acclaimed drama, whose first-year ratings made it a tough choice for the Peacock to renew, tied CBS rookie drama Moonlight for its hour's lead among young adults, according to Variety.

Competition for both will pick up this week when ABC enters the fray with new crime drama Women's Murder Club.

Looking at Friday preliminary Nielsen estimates, Friday Night Lights scored a 2.2 rating / 7 share among adults ages 18-49 and 6.5 million total viewers, tying in the key advertising demographic with week two of the new vampire detective drama Moonlight on CBS (2.2/7 in 18-49, 8.3 million).

Repeats of ABC's Private Practice (1.6/5, 4.9 million) and Fox's K-Ville ran farther behind (prelim 1.2/4, 3.3 million).

Honored with a Peabody award and tabbed AFI's program of the year, Friday Night Lights won the hour outright in adults 18-34 (1.7/6) and male demos.

In both 18-49 and total viewers, Friday Night Lights ratings were up 10 percent from its average over the final month of its first season.

As for Moonlight, it's not a juggernaut either, but it managed to hold onto most of its demo lead-in from 8 p.m. winner Ghost Whisperer (2.4/8, 8.7 million) and won the slot by 2 shares in adults 25-54 (3.1/9).

Numbers (2.7/9, 9.5 million) capped the Eye's winning night, up a tick vs. its season preem of a week ago. ABC's 20/20 moved up to second (2.4/8, 7.2 million), with NBC's Las Vegas slipping to third (2.1/7, 7.4 million).

Matt Richenthal is the Editor in Chief of TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter and on Google+.

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Friday Night Lights Quotes

"When Jason Street went down the first game of the season, everybody wrote us off. Everybody. And yet here we are at the championship game. Forty thousand people out there have also written us off. But there are a few out there who still believe in you."

Eric Taylor

We will all at some time in our lives, fall. Life is so very fragile, we are all vulnerable, and we will all at some point in our lives, fall, we will all fall.
We must carry this in our hearts, that what we have is special, that it can be taken from us, and that when it is taken from us, we will be tested. We will be tested to our very souls. We will all be tested.
It is these times, it is this pain, that allows us to look inside ourselves.

Eric Taylor

Friday Night Lights Music

  Song Artist
Muzzle of Bees Wilco iTunes
Song Evergreen The Brian Jonestown Massacre
Song Bang a Gong (Get it On) T. Rex