Gail Shister | Star still sunny about ratings-dark 'Friday Night Lights'

Like his character on NBC's

Friday Night Lights

,

Kyle Chandler

doesn't rile easily.

Lights isn't lighting up the Nielsens, but Chandler, who plays a Texas high school football coach in the acclaimed new family drama, says it's all good.

"Am I frustrated by the ratings? No. That's not a word I would use. It would be nice if more viewers tuned in. The show's been a blessing in so many ways. Creatively, it's been amazing for me."

Lights' ratings have been anything but amazing.

Averaging an anemic 6.1 million viewers at 8 p.m. Wednesdays, the show ranks 114th among all series this season, according to Nielsen Media Research.

No surprise. Lights must go head-to-head with Wednesday's American Idol on Fox. The No. 1 show on any network, Idol delivers more than 32 million sets of eyeballs every week. Lights out.

Based on the novel and movie of the same name, Lights revolves around the small rural town of Dillon and its beloved Panthers.

Chandler's Eric Taylor is the new coach. Connie Britton costars as his feisty wife, a guidance counselor at Dillon High, and Aimee Teegarden as their rebellious daughter, a student there.

Football is only the backdrop. Explosive issues of family, race and sex are handled with a quiet, understated elegance reminiscent of NBC's late American Dreams.

"A lot of people thought this was a football show," says Chandler, 41, who guest- starred on ABC's Grey's Anatomy as a police bomb expert who got on the wrong end of a bomb that was somehow inside a patient.

"It's not a show about football. It has so much to offer to so many people. It's a very well-crafted, smart, honest look at people's lives in a small town. I even get chills watching some of the scenes, and I work on the damn thing."

Chandler isn't exactly a football freak. His high school team won the Georgia state championship, but at a scrawny 5-foot-5, "I played the tackling dummy," he says.

On Lights, of course, Chandler only pretends to be a football coach. Still, he says he's gotten quite an education about the off-field politics of the sport.

To Coach Taylor, that means his charged interactions with the players, the high school principal, the mayor, and the team's rabid boosters.

Speaking of boosting, what's up with Lights' whack time slot? Given that the show's title includes Friday, its Wednesday address is confusing.

"Rosie O'Donnell said it best," Chandler says. "When she was speaking about our show, she said Saturday Night Live shouldn't be on Sunday or Tuesday. It could be confusing. I think once people watch our show and know what it is, they'll find it again."

Besides, time slots are above Chandler's pay grade.

"I could throw all my ideas at you, but I don't know how that system works. I have to believe there are other people who know what's going on better than I do."

Lower the thermostat. Viewers expecting a hot girl-on-girl kiss between Courteney Cox and Jennifer Aniston on tonight's first-season finale of FX's Dirt are in for a letdown.

Aniston guest stars as Tina Harrod, a lesbian and rival to Cox's tabloid editor Lucy Spiller. As they say goodbye after a lunch, they share "a peck" on the lips, according to executive producer Joel Fields.

Ironically, once news of the scene, shot Jan. 18-19, leaked out to the tabloids, the innocent kiss suddenly became a tongue hockey session between the real-life gal pals.

"The spin did not come from us," says Fields, setting the record, well, straight.

"This is is not Rachel and Monica [of Friends] making out. This is a goodbye peck on the lips between two characters who have a long and complicated friendship. That's it."

Thus far, no word on Dirt's renewal, Fields says, "but I'm hoping we get to come back and play with these characters next year."