When it comes to "Lost," it's all about listening to the fans, McPherson said. The drama series about marooned passengers on a mysterious island will return in the fall in its current Wednesday time slot with seven original episodes, and then go on hiatus until January or February, when it will return to the Wednesday night schedule with original episodes until May.

During "Lost's" hiatus, ABC will launch "Day Break," starring Taye Diggs as a detective who literally lives the same day over and over -- and it's a bad one -- for 13 weeks.

"'Lost' is a show people really love. They make an appointment for [it]," McPherson said. "They absolutely just get furious when it's in repeat. So we want to be able to say to the audience, it's going to be on for this block here -- then bring it back and it will run straight through."

The show's executive producers, Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, said today that they're excited about the new schedule and will design the third season around the new airtime order.

"Our audience was incredibly frustrated with repeats," Cuse wrote in an e-mail. "Now when 'Lost' is on, it's on. And, the audience doesn't have to wait all the way until the spring for the show to return, which given the cliffhanger nature of our finale would be too long."

The new non-repeat schedule "allows us to really keep the momentum of our particular type of storytelling," he added.