Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose for at least two more years: 'Friday Night Lights' renewed!

Ausiello has been saying the announcement is coming for a while now, but it seems to be official today: DirecTV has agreed to order two more seasons of "Friday Night Lights," maintaining the window of exclusivity arrangement they had this year.

Now, there are still two episodes to go in the NBC run of season three, so I want to step very lightly around what happens in those episodes -- and I will ask any commenters who watched the DirecTV run to do the same -- but the season's closing episodes do beautifully set up the show for at least two season's worth of storylines. Easy. And even though a number of the current characters are high school seniors and might not be back full-time, there's definitely still Coach and Mrs. Coach, and Buddy, and some of the characters who aren't graduating yet (Landry and Julie are both juniors at this point in the story).

Midway through this season, I wasn't sure if I wanted it to continue. After I watched the season finale, I would have been furious if it didn't. Three cheers for new business models!