'Lost' to be Canceled in Two Years

Friday, May 04, 2007  -  reddit

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As big of a hit as Lost used to be, nobody really understood what it was about or what was going on. That's a good thing if you're the new kid on the block and people are hungry for a good mystery. It's really, really bad if you're three years old and people are getting sick of being teased without any payoff.

Such is the story of Lost, whose disappearing ratings may be causing ABC to consider ending it after just five seasons. This isn't a new rumor, but it has been refreshed and is now being carried by E! as true, attributed to inside sources at the network.

Season four of Lost will debut later than normal and is probably suffering from the same ratings decline as all other shows across the board. Something you should note here is that while the broadcast debut has been pushed back to January, in all likelyhood its production has not.

This will allow ABC to air more episodes in consecutive order without having to resort to reruns and mid-season breaks, something universally loathed by viewers.

Lost has, more than any other show that I can think of, suffered from slow production. This should alleviate some of those problems, and a time slot change will also probably be in the cards which is the virtual death knell for any show.

I don't think Lost was ever as good as most people thought it was. They started all of these supposedly amazing mysteries and undercurrents and everything seemed to be fitting together just over the horizon. It must take shear genius to do something like that, right? Just how amazing are they really if the writers aren't capable of doing anything with them?

Asking the question is the easy part, while paying it off with a solid satisfying answer is light years more difficult. Lost has always suffered from this, and it's precisely the reason I think we'll be hearing about a ratings decline, schedule shift, time slot change, and eventual early death about two years from now for NBC's drama Heroes.

Nobody buys it today, but nobody bought it during Lost's first season either, and Lost had a significantly larger audiance than Heroes does today. Lost has been on the downswing since just after its second season premier and hasn't been the king of TV for a while now.

If the producers do manage to wrap up enough storylines, though, it may be one of the more collectable DVD sets to come out for some time. Unfortunately, there is a downside to that. Mysteries don't do well in syndication and reruns because once any piece of the mystery has been revealed, there's no value in seeing it again.

Lost's ultimate legacy may be in what could have been, rather than in what was.

Lost and Heroes were ranked 18th and 17th respectively in the ratings as of April 29th.

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Topics: Film, Television, Feature, Lost, Jessica Beil, Spider-man 3, Anna Paquin, Uwe Boll, Far Cry