Check out video of Wisconsin football stars in high school as 'Thursday Night Lights' turns 10

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Friday night lights will always be the ideal, but a local television station has been making a different night of the week home for high-school football over the past decade.

"Thursday Night Lights" will produce its 10th season this year, starting with Thursday's battle between Marquette and Muskego, two teams with multiple Division I football talents. WVTV (Channel 24) in Milwaukee has featured a number of future standouts on its airwaves, including NFL players Melvin Gordon, Dare Ogunbowale, Beau Benzschawel and Derek Watt.

"We're trying to make it an event," said My24 general manager Pete Monfre, in his first full year in the position. "We're heavy into booster clubs, really trying to make it into a special night for these kids to be on television."

The games are aired live and streamed "so grandma and grandpa in North Dakota can watch," and the schedule features a number of area powerhouses. In addition to defending Division 1 state champion Muskego and defending Division 3 state champion Catholic Memorial, the slate also features rivalry games between Homestead and Whitefish Bay as well as Franklin and Oak Creek in "The Helmet Game" to close the year.

My24 will also broadcast Rufus King against Riverside on Oct. 3, an event expected to turn into a first responders night at Pulaski Stadium.

"My goal is to have (former Milwaukee high-school football player) Chief (Alfonso) Morales up in the booth, and the fire chief is going to be there; there's going to be a lot of interviews," Monfre said. "Four of the aldermen went to King. We're talking to all the schools that are hosting, and their mayors are coming out to the games and watching these."

It's certainly a pursuit in local programming; Monfre said Milwaukee is one of 31 markets in the Sinclair Broadcast Group producing live high-school football. But it's also notable that Sinclair recently made a move to acquire a litany of regional sports networks from Disney in the wake of the behemoth's merger with Fox, including Fox Sports Wisconsin— which airs Brewers and Bucks games. Already in partnership with the YES network in New York, Sinclair is beefing up its sports footprint in a big way.

Monfre said it isn't a tough sell encouraging athletic directors to relocate varsity football games to Thursday night.

"Schools love playing on Thursday night on live TV," he said. "We start (scheduling) when school's still in session in May. ... We try to spread it around a little bit (geographically), and we approach athletic directors. They have to get agreement from the away teams and conference, so that takes a little bit of a while, but it goes pretty quick."

The games will re-air on Friday nights, as well, while the majority of the high-school football schedule is under way. That's a change from previous years, when the games re-aired on Sunday afternoons.

"It's not Green Bay Packer ratings, so you can't sell it on ratings; you have to sell it on supporting communities and high school athletes," Monfre said of encouraging sponsors to participate."

My24 will also broadcast the Nov. 16 clash between WIAC powerhouses UW-Whitewater and UW-Oshkosh, plus a schedule of 10 Milwaukee Admirals games and four UW-Milwaukee men's basketball games.

Schedule

Aug. 22 -- Marquette at Muskego

Aug. 29 -- Germantown at Wauwatosa West

Sept. 5 -- Mukwonago at Catholic Memorial (at Carroll University)

Sept. 12 -- Greendale at Pewaukee

Sept. 19 -- Homestead at Whitefish Bay

Sept. 26 -- Waukesha North at Waukesha West

Oct. 3 -- Milwaukee Rufus King at Milwaukee Riverside (at Pulaski Stadium)

Oct. 10 -- Racine St. Catherine's at Greendale Martin Luther

Oct. 17 -- Franklin at Oak Creek

JR Radcliffe can be reached at (262) 361-9141 or jradcliffe@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JRRadcliffe.