Lost's Schedule
The plan is to run season's 4-6 in 16 consecutive episodes during a shortened season from January until May.Season 4 didn't run 16 episodes because of a writer's strike. Thirteen episodes ran and the remaining time will be made up during season's 5 and 6.
Lost's season 3 was broken up into two pods. The first pod consisted of the first six episodes of season 3 and ran from October 4th to November 8th, 2006. The second and final pod of season 3 ran from February 7th through May 23, 2007 with 16 consecutive new episodes each Wednesday night at its new time, 10 p.m. There were no Lost repeats during the break between the pods.
Lost.about.com/library/calendar/bl_calendar.htm]Lost Calendar
Reasons for the New Lost Schedule
During season 2 there were a lot of complaints from Lost fans because of all the reruns. Fans would sit down on a Wednesday night expecting to get some answers to the island's mysteries, only to see a repeat of a previous episode.It takes about 10 days to shoot one Lost episode and about a month to get the episode ready to air. Yet Lost is shown every seven days, which means that even though the creators start putting together the episodes well in advance of the premiere, it doesn't take long for the episode number that is airing to catch up with the episode number that they are making. They can do 23-24 hours of Lost a year, yet the networks need to fill 36 weeks. All shows run into this problem, not just Lost.
What becomes the problem with Lost is that to have random repeats between new episodes confuses and, more importantly, upsets viewers. Fox had the same problem with it's hit show 24. They dealt with the problem by not beginning 24 until January and then running new episodes straight through until May.
Lost creators felt that waiting from May to January was too long for Lost fans, so they got together with ABC to discuss what to do about Lost. The creators were hoping that ABC would allow them to air three pods of episodes with breaks in between. The compromise was two pods of episodes, which would allow ABC to run another program during the 13 week break (they tried a new show,Day Break, but it flopped).
Again, fans complained. So executives and ABC decided to run three more seasons of Lost with 16 consecutive episodes each.
How Scheduling Could Be Better
I think what they have come up with, using the two pods, is a pretty good solution, however it does cause confusion and casual viewers may think Lost was canceled. Even better would be three pods with an equal number of episodes spread out during the season, but I understand that ABC would have a hard time filling two short breaks rather than one long one.What I would really like to see is Lost repeats in order, showing a whole season, leading up to the new season of Lost.
