Seriously they show new episodes, then reeruns for 3 or 4 weeks, a few more new ones then another 4 weeks of reruns. Seriously i guess the joke is on the viewers... get the dang thing over with. the thign is if i did not have a tivo i would not bother looking at when a new one comes on by now. Just thought i would vent a bit.... and if it was not 4 weeks in between old and new epsiodes, it sure did seem like it. I like how deadwood so far has shown a new episode every week and not pulled a fast one, i guess thats why its on pay tv.

ABC is playing the ratings - after years of flopping, they have a couple hits and are going to milk them during sweeps seasons.

That said, they've ordered about 10 episodes more per season of Desperate Housewives and Lost for next year to prevent "re-run" sessions.

Where did you read that? I'm just curious beacause that would lead to an unprecedented 34 episode season for Lost. To my knowledge, outside of cartoons and daytime shows, the most episodes in a recent season hasn't exceeded 28.

This bugs me too, that's why I stopped watching and will just wait for the DVD to come out.

I saw it in a report on Yahoo News, I can't find it now so it may of been retracted.

Sucks if it is.

I am confounded by all these people (and I have noticed there are many) who complain about repeats. Have any of you watched television before?

It's not like episode orders for a season of any given drama have dropped at all in the past 20 years. For as long as I can remember, most shows have had breaks of at least two or three weeks during certain months of the TV season.

Obviously, the serial nature of "Lost" is just so much more prominent than the usual network show that the re-runs of "Lost" just confounds such viewers, and ruins the show for them. Re-runs for shows that run from September to May are normal, but the rabid viewers, plus those spoiled by TV on DVD, are making it seem like the networks are conspiring to piss in these viewer's bowl of wheaties by running re-runs to pad the months in between the usual sweeps month of November, February and May. If you're going to watch free network TV, expect re-runs throughout the season, or hope that the networks will just push all programming to January, and run the shows in order with no re-runs (a la "24" and "Alias" on a way to workaround the loss in continuity that re-runs present).

People are spoiled by shows like 24, Alias, etc. that just run straight through before going to repeats.

Anyway, still no reason to defend the TV industry. It's annoying as hell to get 4 episodes, a cliff hanger, a month off, four more episodes etc.

A week off here and there is fine, a month off here and there is not IMO.

Funny, no one seems to care that the WB pretty much shelved their schedule and just aired re-runs of Smallville, Gilmore Girls, One Tree Hill, Everwood for, like, 6 weeks in the stretch between March and April.

Except that the WB has pretty much made that policy. They have two "hiatuses" in December-January and March-April. I find this approach preferable to the other networks' seemingly random distribution of episodes. I don't like babysitting my television watching to ensure I don't miss a new episode.

Don't get me wrong -- it annoys me as much as anyone else. I'm just accustomed to it.


About adding 10 episodes per season:

I'd think the actors from each show would go on strike if that were to actually happen.

Keep in mind that it takes anywhere from 7 - 10 days to shoot an hour long series episode, so they need breaks so they don't fall behind. You can't show a new episode every week if it takes two weeks to make one, you know? The reason why 24 and Alias (and Deadwood for that matter) aren't showing repeats is because they were scheduled in a way that negated the need for them. 24 and Alias didn't premiere in the fall, but waited until the new year, so half their season was already in the can when they premiered. Shows like Deadwood and The Shield do it all up front so they don't have to schedule breaks (they also only produce half the amount of episodes normal shows do on the broadcast networks).

So anyone complaining about repeats . . . get over it. When we get to TV on Demand in a few years, you'll never have to see a repeat again.

L8r

I don't enjoy having to wait (I can't even wait a week for a new ep of 24!), but I enjoy watching the repeats to see if I missed anything the first time.

I CANNOT WAIT for the new episode. I know I'll be either extremely happy or extremely pissed when the episode ends...

How can you blame this on ABC/Lost when all 22-episode TV seasons that start in September and end in May have large spans of reruns?

Nope, I find all the water-cooler chatter about a show I don't watch annoying too. It's not nearly as bad as listening to the Survivor drones though, at least Lost seems intelligent and inventive based on the 10 minutes I saw a couple of months ago.

Oh wait, what?

Get Tivo and make your own non-stop season.

It confounds me too. Repeats have been a part of television as long as I can remember and some treat it like it is some new annoyance.

:: Agreed, people will bitch no matter what. Yeah, it's a bummer there's breaks, but that's the nature of TV.

with all the shows we watch in this household I actually look forward to repeats. it gives us time to catch up as well as have a bit of a tv break.

Actually those of us that are expats and live overseas as for me the UK and try to keep up with the US shows we have come to love, we don't mind the reruns it gives us time to catch up on the downloading and authoring of DVDs of shows like Lost. Believe me it is stressfull to keep up with Alias & 24. Maybe the networks wanted to be kind to the Bit Torrent community :-)

One question though was the special aired in Wide Screen HDTV format or in Full Screen SD format?

Thanks

I imagine we'll see more of the 24/Alias-type scheduling in the future, especially for shows that aren't as episodic (though now that Alias is running straight-through, the episodes have been more stand-alone overall than in past seasons).

ABC almost killed that show. Season 4 sofar has been horrible, only the last few episodes starting with the one where sid was burried in a coffin and Marshal doing his thing. Arvin Clone brilliant, but they played this show to the Lost crowd and wanted easy episodes that they could get them hooked on that doesn't require any prior knowledge.

ABC is really milking this Wednesday slot. Only good thing they didn't object when the script for the finale came in with overtime and they didn't cut it. Alias airs an hour later while Lost will have a two hour slot for the finale.

Yeah, damn networks, give us new episodes every week from September to May!

I thought the same thing. If these shows weren't hits, they wouldn't be playing these games. Our household is getting annoyed with the scheduling and the, we're a hit now, so let's draw it out. I read an interview with David Fury( who just left the show) saying that ABC wanted them to go slower with storylines. He wondered if people would be patient enough to stick with it. They also wanted storylines to get away from sci fi and unexplainable plots which leads me they are sticking there nose in and having them change things. Maybe this is why he left the show. ?
Repeats are ok, I am just annoyed with them giving us more questions than answers.

I can see a backlash coming if they arent careful.

I'm annoyed. They are showing new episodes of Alias every week why cant they do the same for LOST. I would have to think it would only boost the ratings for alias if they did show new episodes of lost. And the stunt they pulled last week with the clips show. God damn that pissed me off. I was all excited for a new episode, as i noticed my dvr was recording it, and i looked at the info and it was garbage. At least they are giving us a 2 hour season finale. Hopefully it will answer some of the questions i have from the show.