NFL Network continues to produce original programming as a compliment to its live studio shows. As the regular season is already a week old, NFL Network has aired “Do Your Job” and “America’s Game” on the 2014 New England Patriots championship run and is set to air a new season of “A Football Life” this week.

The series that will get special premieres after Thursday Night Football tonight are the second season of “Undrafted” and a new show, “Football Town: Barrow, Alaska,” both of which are not produced by NFL Films. Both programs will air back-to-back on Tuesdays with Undrafted settling into the 8 p.m. ET slot followed by Football Town at 8:30 p.m. Both series will have a one-hour premiere on Tuesday, September 22 then settle into half-hour programs the following week.

Ron Semaio, the vice president of programming for NFL Media tells Awful Announcing that the two series fall into NFL Network’s penchant for original storytelling, “What our audience and our fans come to us for and have become passionate about is our long-form, biographical storytelling and NFL Films has done that since I was a little kid.”

Semaio said the expansion of original programming at NFL Network began last year with the first season of “Undrafted” and “Finding Giants,” a series which followed the New York Giants scouting staff. And he added that “Undrafted” found an audience right away, “You’re telling stories everyone can relate to. As you have thousands of guys who play college football, less than 300 of them are drafted, but there are still a lot of people who want to pursue that dream and not give up,” he said. “They see their inspiration in guys like Kurt Warner or guys like Wes Welker who weren’t drafted and fought hard and ended up having nice careers in the National Football League.”

This season, “Undrafted” will follow six players over eight episodes as they chase the the brass ring that is the NFL career:

  • George Farmer – WR from USC
  • Cole Jaeschke – QB from Upper Iowa University
  • Harold Legania – DT from University of Minnesota
  • Chad Toocheck – WR from University of West Alabama
  • Troy Torrence – WR from St. Francis University
  • Brandon Wegher – RB from Morningside College

As for “Football Town: Barrow, Alaska,” the series focuses on a high school team that did not even have a football field until donations led to the construction of an artificial turf field. Because there are no roads in or out of Barrow, the team has to fly to every game.

Semaio said the story doesn’t have anything to do with the NFL, but is more about perseverance, “This is really about football in a much larger context. (Barrow) is the northern-most town in the United States, several hundred miles inside the Arctic Circle. Ten years ago, the community had a problem with youths and there was a very high dropout rate for high school, a lot of drug abuse.” Semaio said, “In order to try to improve the community and make it better, and the thought was to try and start a football team. That was put into place ten years ago and over time, it’s become the centerpiece of the community.”

As mentioned, both “Undrafted” and “Football Town: Barrow, Alaska” are produced by outside production companies and not by NFL Films. Semaio said by expanding original programming on NFL Network, it not only expands NFL Media’s production capabilities, but also its resources. “NFL Films is tremendous at what they do, but they do a lot more stuff than just production for the NFL Network,” he said. “They’re doing stuff for teams on a weekly basis, they do stuff for the league on a weekly basis, they still do ‘Hard Knocks’ and they produce documentaries for HBO, Showtime, ESPN. They really are the production arm of the National Football League as well as doing work for NFL Network. The decision of not just staying in-house was really built on how we can have greater capabilities, how can we have more resources.”

“Undrafted” had a one-hour preview this week on CBS and will air once again on NFL Network following tonight’s Thursday Night Football game then settle into its regular timeslot next Tuesday night at 8 ET.

“Football Town: Barrow, Alaska” premieres September 22 at 9 p.m. then will air regularly at 8:30 p.m. the following week. Here’s a trailer for the series:

About Ken Fang

Ken has been covering the sports media in earnest at his own site, Fang's Bites since May 2007 and at Awful Announcing since March 2013.

He provides a unique perspective having been an award-winning radio news reporter in Providence and having worked in local television.

Fang celebrates the four Boston Red Sox World Championships in the 21st Century, but continues to be a long-suffering Cleveland Browns fan.