How to find LOST's ratings...
A few media outlets are reporting on the recent theft of LOST's ratings.
ABC's TV darling from two years ago has been moved twice since it's arrival. It's freshman year it was at 8pm. It's bumpy sophomore year it was moved to 9pm and now during it's junior year it's at 10pm.
Normally, when this type of thing happens it's due to ratings from another show is taking it's viewership or the content of the show is too edgy for 8pm or the programming people just smoked a bit too much weed and decided to say "Let's go put the hot Prom Queen at 10pm when everyone is asleep!"
Unfortunately, in LOST's case, all three are true.
The Ratings Death Star that is FOX's American Idol and CBS's Criminal Minds can be blamed for LOST being moving to 10pm.
CBS's TV darling Jericho and NBC's fledgling Friday Night Lights and FOX's Bones at 8pm is the only reason ABC is showing comedies at 8pm then showing a LOST Repeat then a new episode. Any memories of the loverly Moon Bloodgood and Day Break are gone
Stepping back from the ratings angle when you look at LOST's writing track record, it's understandable why the ratings are dropping.
The writing since second season has been hit or miss and the flashbacks are holding back the show's actual plot.
NBC's new hit Heroes is a prime example of what LOST is missing. Heroes has give or take the same amount of cast members (+ or - 5) and has been running multiple arcs since the pilot episode without missing a beat.
Thankfully the two most recent episodes have been better than most so hopefully things are looking up.
Personally, I think what ABC needs to do is figure out what night is not filled with Death Stars and put LOST back on at 8pm and make gorram sure the writing doesn't suck.
The cast, characters and location are there, the slight hiccups with cast members showing up DUI is the least of it's problems. It's the writing that is off the tracks and unlike The Simpsons that seem to be impervious to bad writing, LOST will never be that lucky.
And, just to show I'm not beating the horse that is LOST just replace the word LOST with Battlestar Galactica and ABC with Sci-Fi Channel.
Both shows can start on that Television Night entitled "When Good Shows Go Bad!"