Premiere Notes

DarkUFO is reporting that according to companies buying ad time, the Lost Season 5 premiere will be held on Thursday, January 30th, at 10:00 pm.

ABC still hasn't officially announced the date, so things aren't set in stone yet. And since they're not, let me just take the time to make a fruitless request: move it back to 9 p.m.

Yep, this is another ratings geek rant...

Lost loses anywhere between 2-4 million viewers by airing at 10 and not 9 or 8. Truth be told, it makes a few of those viewers up through DVR, and a few of the losses are more due to the content of the show than the time -- over four seasons, as expected, Lost has trimmed its audience as some casual viewers decided they didn't want to stick with the whole six year commitment.

But the time shift does make a difference -- The first six episodes of Season 3, airing at 9, all scored 14-16 million viewers. When the show returned for the final two-thirds of the season at 10 p.m., it fell down to a steady 12-13 million viewers, which it maintained (with a few ups and downs) in Season 4.

ABC will say that sticking Lost on Thursdays at 10 behind Grey's Anatomy is a perfect spot. And it sounds like a powerful two hours of television. But I don't care about Grey's, and that show has been having its own ratings decline anyway; the days of it seriously competing with CSI are over. So any post-Grey's boost would be negligible. (It also throws into question the future of the current post-Grey's show, Life on Mars).

However, Lost is a cult sci-fi show that hasn't yet dipped below 10 million viewers for a new episode, which is so impressive it's almost an oxymoron. So maybe I should just relax.

P.S. They'll be marketing the premiere as a "two-hour event," but that means the first of those hours is going to be another recap show.

TAGS: Premiere, Ratings, Season 5, Time Slot
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