Taken from tv.com;

Producers of ABC's hit Lost told SCI FI Wire that the show will consist of two self-contained arcs in the upcoming third season, while ABC announced that it will answer the mystery of Hurley's numbers in the alternate-reality game The Lost Experience. :ermm:

I have never heard anything so silly, so they are going to air six episodes, then put something else on just long enough for everyone to forget about the program? Let's hope channel 4 doesn't follow suit.

Yup, so leaving a huuuuuge gap between the 2 parts is the way to go. Stoopid Americans ;)

Audience drop-off hasn't been an issue for other shows subjected to lengthy mid-season breaks thus far. I'm thinking particularly the Stargate shows which have employed the tactic for the last 3/4 years. Prison Break also did it last year, and came back even stronger.

As a concept though, I have to agree, it's stupid, not to mention incredibly frustrating! :rolleyes: I'd rather they just showed an episode every two weeks instead of every week. That way they wouldn't need repeats at all.

I'm sorry, I couldn't disagree more :)

I got very tired last year not knowing whether I was going to get a new episode that week, or indeed checking the schedule to see if I needed to remember to tape it that week. Add to that the frustration of having episodes all over the place so ones lost track of the narrative and things. Plus, with such an arc-intensive series like Lost, viewers will tune out of they find they miss an episode, and lose interest if they keep on seeing reruns.

This way you'll have a concentrated uninterrupted stretch of episodes each week, then a haitus (which we would get anyway), and then another uninterrupted run through to the end. It's done wonders for the likes of 24, Alias and to an extent Prison Break - I'm all for Lost doing the same thing :)

Not quite sure I'd agree with that Phillip. Fans of arc-intensive shows such as Lost tend to be fairly clued in as to when episodes are airing on a short-term basis.

Looking at the numbers for Lost's second season, there were 5 intermittent breaks throughout the run, the viewership, on average between those breaks changed as little as 4%.

24 - Doesn't actually have a mid-season hiatus, rather starting later, but equally, a much longer gap inbetween seasons for the fans to wait through. Last year 24 ran from January to May. Assuming the same arrangement of a January start this year that means 24 fans will have had to wait 8 months for the show to return. That's just as likely to kill interest as re-runs.

Alias - Both returned later and had a mid-season hiatus. Coincidence that Alias's numbers fell by a third against it's season four numbers? It's numbers across the first four seasons had been relatively consistent, indicating that the change of airing format hadn't perhaps met with great success.

Prison Break - Dropped nearly 20% of it's audience during it's mid-season break, and struggled to claw it back, continuing to fall until the season finale. This possibly indicates that people weren't sure when the show came off hiatus.

The important point to note that is with shows airing around 20-24 episodes per season they're not even covering half of the year should they air them without interruption. There's going to be gaps in the schedule somewhere in order to prolongue the season. Whether that's best placed as a number of minor interruptions or one large one is a moot point. I remember back to what it was like having to wait inbetween seasons of Star Trek, or The X Files, because the BBC showed them consecutively you were often left with 8/9 month gaps to endure! :rolleyes: :lol:

Maybe, but (for example) over here unless you're specifically keeping track of what is on when, all you really have to tell you that there's a new episode is the trailer for it during the week, and that's assuming you actually catch it - many times unless I looked at places like TV.com I wouldn't have any idea whether the weeks episode was new or not.

I wonder what the viewing figures for Lost reruns are - if they're not as high as new episodes I wonder whether there's an initial surge when people tune in at 8pm/9pm/whatever, only to drop down when they realise it's a rerun.

I disagree with the 24 point that it would kill interest - with 24 it keeps going until the season end, and you know it'll be back in January next year when the new series starts. With reruns plonked throughout the season you never know when it'll next be on (unless you actively look and find out)

I concede the Prison Break point - I remember it was ended in November 05 and a return date was never given at the time (IIRC it was supposed to be May 06 when 24 ended, and then it was bought forward). However, several weeks prior to the return there was another large advertising campaign saying the series was back, so people had enough warning to tune in :)

No, I'd have to say you're right on the 'interest' point. If anything the break's only made people more eager for it. It's audience went up from 12 to nearly 14 million for its fifth season. I have to say though, I'm pretty glad I'm not a massive fan, that long inbetween seasons is incredibly frustrating. The 8/9 month gap inbetween seasons of The Shield is bad enough for me! :rolleyes:

Not sure on the Lost re-runs. From the few instances I've found the numbers given are significantly lower than those of first-run episodes so I'd assume that not many people are fooled, but I could be wrong. :)

Hmmm....

S4 of Alias had Lost as a lead-in and had lots of stand-alone eps.

S5 had the difficult Thursday 9pm ( :unsure: ) timeslot, plus the series introduced 4 new characters and got rid of 3 much-loved ( by some of us ;) ) cast members. Even if S5 had been coddled by the network and given a good timeslot, etc, the quality of the scripts and production just wasn`t there anymore. :(

It did very little for me to begin with :lol:

:o

Even season 2 ?! Some of us liked it. :snooty: :lol:

Vic loved it, but I always thought it was shite :rolleyes:
Just couldn't get into it at all :(