TAYLOR KITSCH is showing off an advance copy of the January issue of Men’s Health magazine. On the cover, he’s posing shirtless, his chiseled frame and laser stare in prime form. He likes what he sees.

“I feel like I cut and pasted myself onto the cover,” said Mr. Kitsch, the confident but not cocky model turned actor, on a recent Saturday evening at the Driskill Hotel. “When I was 21, 22, I went up and introduced myself,” he said, “and told them I would be on the cover.” The magazine’s focus on fitness spoke to him, and now, at 25, he is their youngest-ever cover boy.

Anyone who has not discovered NBC’s “Friday Night Lights” should know one thing: It is not about football.

Because it is a hormonally charged episodic drama featuring young, telegenic actors, would “Friday Night Lights” be a teen soap?

Nope. It isn’t that either.

“We’ve been uncertain about what message we want to send about what this show is,” says executive producer Brian Grazer, whose Imagine Television developed the series.

“It has a different look, and it can take a minute or so for people to find its emotional epicenter. It was an extremely risky idea, because it doesn’t have a conventional form. But the alternative to trying something different is doing the same thing over and over, and that isn’t very rewarding.”

NBC had enough confidence in its critically acclaimed wallflower to give it a full-season order before Thanksgiving. The network just made good on its promise to find “Friday Night Lights” a luckier time slot – (it had the misfortune of debuting at 8 p.m. on Tuesdays nights, without a strong lead-in and against the ratings juggernaut “Dancing with the Stars”). Beginning Jan. 10, the show will air at 8 p.m. Wednesdays.