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Ask TV Squad: What's Up With The 'Lost' Rerun?
by Joel Keller, posted Apr 26th 2010 3:05PM
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V watchers are a curious group, something that we at TV Squad see every day. We get questions that are as current as "When is 'Mad Men' coming back?" to ones that are more wistful, such as "When is 'Shark' coming back? Boy, I loved that James Woods!"
But, our readers aren't the only ones who are curious tube fans. We ask each other questions, ones that sometimes get answered right away and ones that need a little research.
So, in this new incarnation of "Ask TV Squad," we're not only going to answer reader questions, but we're also going to try to answer some of the burning questions that have been confounding us here at TV Squad HQ.
If you have a question that you'd like answered, feel free to e-mail us at asktvsquad [at] gmail [dot] com.
For now, we'll start with a question that's gotten everyone curious:
Why is tomorrow's episode of 'Lost' a rerun? I thought ABC was going to air 'Lost' straight through without repeats. It's a bummer to have a repeat while it's been building momentum towards its big finale.
This one was such a head-scratcher that I decided to call ABC and find out. The show's publicist, Jeffrey Fordis, wouldn't go so far as giving me an official statement, but he did indicate that the rerun that we're seeing this week was planned all along.
How could that be? Well, according to Fordis, the network and the producers of 'Lost' agreed that the last season of the show would consist of eighteen hours. That's eighteen hours, not eighteen episodes. Since four of those hours were eaten up by the season premiere and the series finale, the total number of episodes was really sixteen.
Stay with me now... this is where things get cloudy. So, for some reason, ABC decided to schedule the sixteen episodes over seventeen weeks. Fordis didn't say why they decided to do that, but this week off had been planned all along. When I asked him who decided to pick this particular week to throw up the rerun, he told me that the programming department makes those decisions.
I thank Fordis for getting back to me, but of course that's typical PR spin. I'm guessing that the network didn't want to sacrifice a week during the February sweeps period to air an episode at the end of April. And, going into the huge May sweeps period, sacrificing this week was the best move; there's enough momentum built up to give people a chance to breathe.
But that doesn't mean that the fans don't feel a little cheated right now. They're used to the rhythm of 'Lost' airing a new episode every week from February through May. Keeping them hanging -- and doing so unannounced -- at such a critical time seems a little bit of a tease, don't you think?
Should ABC have just delayed the premiere until February 9 and aired the episodes straight through? Or are you OK with this rerun?
V watchers are a curious group, something that we at TV Squad see every day. We get questions that are as current as "When is 'Mad Men' coming back?" to ones that are more wistful, such as "When is 'Shark' coming back? Boy, I loved that James Woods!"But, our readers aren't the only ones who are curious tube fans. We ask each other questions, ones that sometimes get answered right away and ones that need a little research.
So, in this new incarnation of "Ask TV Squad," we're not only going to answer reader questions, but we're also going to try to answer some of the burning questions that have been confounding us here at TV Squad HQ.
If you have a question that you'd like answered, feel free to e-mail us at asktvsquad [at] gmail [dot] com.
For now, we'll start with a question that's gotten everyone curious:
Why is tomorrow's episode of 'Lost' a rerun? I thought ABC was going to air 'Lost' straight through without repeats. It's a bummer to have a repeat while it's been building momentum towards its big finale.
This one was such a head-scratcher that I decided to call ABC and find out. The show's publicist, Jeffrey Fordis, wouldn't go so far as giving me an official statement, but he did indicate that the rerun that we're seeing this week was planned all along.
How could that be? Well, according to Fordis, the network and the producers of 'Lost' agreed that the last season of the show would consist of eighteen hours. That's eighteen hours, not eighteen episodes. Since four of those hours were eaten up by the season premiere and the series finale, the total number of episodes was really sixteen.
Stay with me now... this is where things get cloudy. So, for some reason, ABC decided to schedule the sixteen episodes over seventeen weeks. Fordis didn't say why they decided to do that, but this week off had been planned all along. When I asked him who decided to pick this particular week to throw up the rerun, he told me that the programming department makes those decisions.
I thank Fordis for getting back to me, but of course that's typical PR spin. I'm guessing that the network didn't want to sacrifice a week during the February sweeps period to air an episode at the end of April. And, going into the huge May sweeps period, sacrificing this week was the best move; there's enough momentum built up to give people a chance to breathe.
But that doesn't mean that the fans don't feel a little cheated right now. They're used to the rhythm of 'Lost' airing a new episode every week from February through May. Keeping them hanging -- and doing so unannounced -- at such a critical time seems a little bit of a tease, don't you think?
Should ABC have just delayed the premiere until February 9 and aired the episodes straight through? Or are you OK with this rerun?
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