"Friday Night Lights" beating its rivals

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - It isn't football season for a few months still, but NBC's "Friday Night Lights" is making a little progress down the field this summer in its fourth season.

The critics' favorite, which follows a coach and teenagers in a Texas football town, was never able to translate its Peabody and Emmy awards to ratings success. It's down from its high point -- never very high, to be sure -- during the second season before it moved to originals on DirecTV that were later repeated on NBC.

Yet with the fall TV season over and CBS' "The Ghost Whisperer" (itself canceled) out of originals, "Friday Night Lights" is putting together a quiet string of modest victories at 8 p.m. Fridays even as it has diminished ratings.

The latest victory was last Friday when "Lights" tied for first place (with a rerun of ABC's "Wife Swap") at 8 p.m. among adults 18-49 with 3.6 million total viewers, according to preliminary data released by Nielsen Media Research. NBC said that was the fifth consecutive week that "Lights" has been No. 1 or tied.

Season-to-date, "Friday Night Lights" on NBC is averaging 4.1 million viewers, thanks to a boost from DVR use. That's down from its peak, the 2007-08 season, when it averaged 6.2 million viewers.