One of my favorite television shows, ABC’s hit series LOST, is losing viewers fast. This article postulates that it is due to the frequent break of continuity for reruns. Fox’s "24" shows the whole season with almost no breaks and no repeats.
In an age where whole seasons of a series can by bought on DVD (or iTunes) and watched in one continuous sitting (if you choose to do so), does it make sense to do the same thing with broadcast TV? As EW points out, even the shows producers hate the reruns (although they say the filming schedule makes them necessary). So why torture the fans with them?
What’s your take on the LOST ratings slide? Are you still watching the show or have you given up on it?
[ Tags: disney, abc, lost, television, network+tv, dvd, series+dvd ]
Ahhh… ABC’s tradition of killing promising shows with an irregular schedule continues…
Now why oh why can’t they do the same thing with horrible shows like Hope & Faith?!
Why do we have to “save” the timeslot for shows because it takes a while to film them? What’s wrong with splitting a 52 week year into two shows of 26 weeks (episodes) each… get rid of reruns completely. 13 weeks of Lost, 13 weeks of other good show, 13 weeks of Lost, 13 weeks of other good show. They do that on the BBC all the time. Run a series while they have it, then move on.
(Plus, in the UK, many series tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end, rather than NA’s habit of having a beginning, middle, and then dragging out the end as long as possible to keep the gravy train running, sometimes getting cancelled before they even do the end.)
Well, they’re about to lose me because they’re dragging the storyline out so much! I guess it wouldn’t be so bad if ABC didn’t spread the episodes out so much.
But it’s not just ABC that kills promising shows through scheduling. IMO, Fox remains the king of that manoever.
I WAS addicted to Lost, but due to the reruns and flashbacks it’s hard to keep up! I’m really not following it this season and it’s too bad.
Also, if they EVER summed up just one point that would leave viewers a lot more satisfied. It seems like you never get anywhere and no resolution to anything. My 2 cents.
The breaks in continuity are definitely loosing me as a weekly viewer. I introduced myself to Lost by buying the 1st season DVD boxset and I’m close to freeing up my Wednesday evenings for the rest of the season and just buying the next DVD boxset. It’s that or buy a TiVo.
I guess this all goes to show that while American television producers assumtions that consumers fear continuity has been unfounded, American television has never been set up to do continuity well anyway.
There are several Lost fans in my office. Every Wednesday we discuss the last episode and look forward to the new one. We’ve started watching American Idol to protest the repeats!
I think the slide in ratings for Lost has to do with the fact that the show isn’t nearly as good this year as it was last. Or, to say that more bluntly, this season sucks.
Last season we were introduced to all of these mysteries and started to get to know these characters. This season the same mysteries are there, nothing gets resolved in a fulfilling fashion, and the characters haven’t become any deeper or more interesting. Instead they introduce us to a handful of new people, who are all still very shallow, and drag out the mysteries. Quite simply, the show isn’t worth the time it takes to watch it anymore.
I work at a company that was tapped to create a slate of videogames for the Lost franchise. All skews and ports. At the time, I told a colleague, “These games will never be made”. Well, the studio hired up for the new work, and the projects had begun, and the word from Disney at the time was that they saw Lost as a Star Trek type of a franchise. I did not, and I still don’t. It’s impossible to keep that kind of empty suspense interesting for long. What at first seems claustrophobic and intense after a short while feels phony and contrived. Anyone with any sense of story or drama could see that problem around the corner.
Long story short, Disney got cold feet, and pulled the games from their dev schedule mere weeks into the project. People had picked up and moved their families to Seattle to work on these things and they were cancelled while the new hires were driving to Washington.
Disney/ABC doesn’t seem to know squat about what makes a successful franchise. For every Pirates, there’s a Haunted Mansion, or an Alias- also a TV dog from the get go, in my opinion due to it’s dead serious, dry tone and utter lack of originality. Like Twin Peaks and The X Files, two other more successful shows that also couldn’t finish what they’d started dramatically, Lost will be tossed aside in a year, and Disney will, mark my words, have learned nothing from the experience.
I think the reruns are killing the show. They should run it more often, either in a style like 24 or hold off the reruns until the end of the season. I shouldn’t have to wait 3 weeks or so to watch the next episode, then wait another 2 weeks for the next.
The show’s pacing is also getting a little irratating. Do I need to see Jack’s backstory about losing his wife and have to wait to find out some answers about the island? We know these characters down to the mundane, but not the island or the Others. I hope JJ Abrams does better with the third season of Lost than how he did with Alias.
The show is getting to gather a lot of hateful fans due to its incoherent story lines and constant twists and turns that go nowhere. Man.. if I was a faithful viewer all these years, I would be pissed off by season 3. I stopped watching and dont even care anymore. I am sure that goes for most people. Heroes is SO MUCH better.
Reruns definitely killed it. Long hiatus, why would you do that. Been a fan and because of that i didnt care for the show anymore. I think they should pair it again with a good show like season 2 where after Lost, next was Invasion. I think the writers try to dodge a lot of bloggers theories that wouldve been right thats why the storyline got us literally all lost.
Ratings might improve by the 5th episode…if not then this is definitely the last season…
I still watch the show, and it is on it’s 8th episode of the 3rd season… I am thinking about stopping. I want to wait until it comes out on DVD, in a sense. I don’t like having all of these questions! The porducers, and the writters of the show are making m feel like I am RETARDED!!! I feel as if they are insulting my intelligence with all of theses questins on top of questions on top of questions! ETC!!! NO ANSWERS!
I am very dissapointed in this show, as it once was good. Now I think LOST has truly LOST it’s way!
-Alic
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