This is The Best Of Plus, a look at the top performers since 2001-02 using numbers that are adjusted for historical decline. The table simply looks at the top n examples, where n is the number of years since 2001-02... so with each yearly update, each list will get one entry longer. There are some pithy notes about many of the seasons below the table. The chart you can activate at the bottom chronicles the top single performer within each year.
Showing posts with label Lost. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lost. Show all posts
Thursday, December 28, 2017
Tuesday, December 20, 2016
The Ultimate SpotVault, Lost
Friday, August 23, 2013
Top 10 of the Last 10, Veteran Final Seasons
The collective decline in Live+SD ratings makes it hard to fairly
compare numbers across seasons. But with the A18-49+ stat, we have the
technology! Enter the "Top 10 of the Last 10" lists,
which will line up the last ten seasons (2003-04 thru 2012-13) and give
us an idea of which shows were strongest after we set the collective
decline off to the side. (I'll throw in the raw numbers too, to give a
sense of how far ratings have fallen.)
This week, the series finale of Top 10 of the Last 10 looks at... series finales, plus the seasons that accompany them. How far did some of the one-time megahits fall by the end? I don't have a particular series length in mind when I say "veteran" final seasons, but suffice to say I'm using that word to weed out first-year cancellations like Coupling and Rob.
This week, the series finale of Top 10 of the Last 10 looks at... series finales, plus the seasons that accompany them. How far did some of the one-time megahits fall by the end? I don't have a particular series length in mind when I say "veteran" final seasons, but suffice to say I'm using that word to weed out first-year cancellations like Coupling and Rob.
Friday, June 14, 2013
Top 10 of the Last 10, New Scripted Shows
The collective decline in Live+SD ratings makes it hard to fairly
compare numbers across seasons. But with the A18-49+ stat, we have the
technology! Enter the "Top 10 of the Last 10" lists,
which will line up the last ten seasons (2003-04 thru 2012-13) and give
us an idea of which shows were strongest after we set the collective
decline off to the side. (I'll throw in the raw numbers too, to give a
sense of how far ratings have fallen.)
Today, the top 10 scripted newbies of the last decade. It's quite an eclectic list; some went on to sustained success and are still big nearly a decade later, some flamed out quickly, and some... didn't even get renewed for season two?!
Today, the top 10 scripted newbies of the last decade. It's quite an eclectic list; some went on to sustained success and are still big nearly a decade later, some flamed out quickly, and some... didn't even get renewed for season two?!
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
The War of 18-49, Lost
LOST (ABC)
Why post this on Wednesday? Four of Lost's six seasons aired on Wednesday, and the show actually aired regularly in all three hours on Wednesday. The show had six regular timeslots in six seasons, also including two hours on Thursday during season 4 and Tuesday at 9:00 for the final season.
See (who saw) how it all began: Lost was the first of four major series premieres in 9 months that would totally reverse the fortunes of an ABC that was slumping after the decline of Millionaire. And while it wasn't as big as the Desperate Housewives premiere a couple weeks later, it was still strong, attracting 18.65 million viewers and a 6.8/20 in the demo. It declined the next couple weeks, but only by small amounts: to a 6.5 in week 2 and a 6.2 in week 3. Then it bounced right back up to that 6.8 in week 4 and would only drop below the 6.0 mark once in all of season 1.
The best of times: As strong as season 1 was, the clear peak for Lost was in early season 2, when it premiered with 23.47 million viewers and a 10.2/25 in the demo, the show's only double-digit demo ever. Six of the first seven episodes of season 2 broke a 9.0 demo, while no other airing in any season did, and 11 of the first 12 episodes of season 2 broke an 8.0 demo, while just one other airing did. Are you getting my point yet?!
The worst of times: Lost dropped a lot from its best days, but not as much as the likes of Grey's Anatomy and Desperate Housewives, because while it was never as potent as those two at their peaks, by the very end it was actually a slightly stronger show. As far as low points, the show dipped below the 4.0 mark on five occasions, including once in season 5 and four times in the last season. The lowest rating was a 3.7 demo on 4/20/10.
Then vs. now: ABC famously announced in 2007, near the end of season 3, that the show would end after 48 episodes across three more seasons. The show was coming off the widely reviled six-episode "pod" and, after a long in-season hiatus, had dropped from a 7.0 before to a 5.7 in the second episode after and was in the low 5's around the time of the announcement. From a ratings standpoint, it seems like a smart decision, as the show's lowest average since then was the 4.46 of the penultimate season, down only about 10-15% from where it was around announcement time. That's a pretty good hold for a serialized drama across more than three seasons, or about two full seasons' worth of episodes. Of course, we'll never know what it would've done without the announcement, but it certainly did better down the stretch than its open-ended peers on ABC. It stayed strong, and it went out strong, and that's probably the best it could've done.
Adults 18-49 info by season:
| Seas | Year | Timeslot | Avg | y2y | Lo | Hi | Results | Grade |
| 1 | 2004-05 | Wednesday 8:00 | 6.89 | 5.9 | 8.4 | detail | ||
| 2 | 2005-06 | Wednesday 9:00 | 7.92 | +15% | 6.1 | 10.2 | detail | |
| 3 | 2006-07 | Wed 9:00, Wed 10:00 | 5.85 | -26% | 4.9 | 7.7 | detail | |
| 4 | 2007-08 | Thu 9:00, Thu 10:00 | 5.31 | -9% | 4.6 | 6.7 | detail | |
| 5 | 2008-09 | Wednesday 9:00 | 4.46 | -16% | 3.8 | 5.2 | detail | |
| 6 | 2009-10 | Tuesday 9:00 | 4.49 | +1% | 3.7 | 5.8 | detail |
Historical-adjusted ratings by season:
| Seas | Year | A18-49+ | Label | Now15 | y2y | Lo | Hi | Premiere | Finale |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2004-05 | 169 | big hit | 2.84 | 145 | 206 | 167 | 191 | |
| 2 | 2005-06 | 195 | big hit | 3.28 | +15% | 150 | 251 | 251 | 187 |
| 3 | 2006-07 | 155 | big hit | 2.61 | -20% | 130 | 204 | 204 | 157 |
| 4 | 2007-08 | 161 | big hit | 2.70 | +3% | 139 | 203 | 203 | 148 |
| 5 | 2008-09 | 148 | hit | 2.50 | -8% | 126 | 173 | 166 | 146 |
| 6 | 2009-10 | 160 | big hit | 2.69 | +8% | 131 | 206 | 195 | 206 |
| AVERAGE: | 165 | big hit | |||||||
| CAREER: | 988 | tentpole | |||||||
For more on The War of 18-49, my look at the history of primetime TV's veteran shows, see the Index.
Monday, May 24, 2010
LOST finale
I posted this very brief review of the finale on PIFeedback and decided to cross-post it here for archiving purposes and for the folks who don't go there... it is not the longest or the best review of last night's finale that you will read, but it's all I felt I needed to add to the conversation about last night and the series in general.
I thought the finale was a very strong episode of TV, and the series as a whole was great TV, but season 6 was pretty disappointing. The payoff to the flash-sideways was fairly lame, but I guess I didn't get that mad about it because I found most of the flash-sideways pretty lame to begin with, so there wasn't a huge letdown.
I think I'll always feel Lost was at its best in the first three years, when as a show it was more character-driven. I actually preferred it back when everyone else called it "slow" and said "nothing was happening," and I'm not sure that them setting an end date really ended up being much of a net gain. It was certainly time to get rid of the regular old flashback structure by the end of season 3, but I'm not sure that a ten-year "slow" run for this show would've really been worse. (And I was most excited about the second half of the run during the season 5 time at Dharma, which I think often captured the spirit of the first three years.) I've felt that way for much of the last three years, and I've usually thought I was in a very, very small minority for feeling that way, but now it seems everyone is saying the show was best in the first three seasons.
Mythologically, yes, tons is left unresolved, but how much of it do I need to know? Eh, not all that much. I do think it'd be helpful to know why Jacob seemed so convinced that letting out MiB or turning out the light would be the end of the whole world... clarifying whether there were big-time stakes on a global level would've been good. Perhaps it was just Jacob's paranoia. What is the light in the middle of the island? Sure, it'd be cool to find out more, but even if we did know more, the best answer would be that it was a big ol' MacGuffin.
I thought the finale was a very strong episode of TV, and the series as a whole was great TV, but season 6 was pretty disappointing. The payoff to the flash-sideways was fairly lame, but I guess I didn't get that mad about it because I found most of the flash-sideways pretty lame to begin with, so there wasn't a huge letdown.
I think I'll always feel Lost was at its best in the first three years, when as a show it was more character-driven. I actually preferred it back when everyone else called it "slow" and said "nothing was happening," and I'm not sure that them setting an end date really ended up being much of a net gain. It was certainly time to get rid of the regular old flashback structure by the end of season 3, but I'm not sure that a ten-year "slow" run for this show would've really been worse. (And I was most excited about the second half of the run during the season 5 time at Dharma, which I think often captured the spirit of the first three years.) I've felt that way for much of the last three years, and I've usually thought I was in a very, very small minority for feeling that way, but now it seems everyone is saying the show was best in the first three seasons.
Mythologically, yes, tons is left unresolved, but how much of it do I need to know? Eh, not all that much. I do think it'd be helpful to know why Jacob seemed so convinced that letting out MiB or turning out the light would be the end of the whole world... clarifying whether there were big-time stakes on a global level would've been good. Perhaps it was just Jacob's paranoia. What is the light in the middle of the island? Sure, it'd be cool to find out more, but even if we did know more, the best answer would be that it was a big ol' MacGuffin.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
The Lost Repeat Lead-in
V got a 1.9 in adults 18-49 last night. That's got some people on the Internet proclaiming it a renewal-clincher and some proclaiming it a death knell. I'm not gonna break the tie, but I will take a look at V in the context of a few other recent Lost lead-outs. Here are how a few other Lost lead-outs did once they got a repeat for a lead-in:
3/27/08: Lost (R) 1.8 demo, Eli Stone 1.9 demo
4/3/08: Lost (R) 1.3 demo, Eli Stone 1.6 demo
4/17/08: Lost (R) 1.3 demo, Eli Stone 2.0 demo
3/11/09: Lost (R) 1.6 demo, Life on Mars 1.4 demo
4/22/09: Lost (clips) 2.9 demo, The Unusuals 1.4 demo
4/27/10: Lost (R) 1.8 demo, V 1.9 demo
Also worth noting that Life on Mars, The Unusuals, and a fifth show not included here, The Forgotten, all aired episodes that did worse with an original Lost lead-in than V's 1.9 last night.
Only one of the above five shows got a renewal or even an extension based on its post-Lost performance, and it isn't much of an argument to say "it's doing better than shows that got canceled!" But if you throw those out and just look at the one renewed show, Eli Stone, it's pretty comparable. Yes, the Eli Stone renewal came in spring 2008, when the writer's strike was just ending and there was a lot of uncertainty about development. Yes, Eli Stone was an in-house production and V isn't. Yes, I personally believe that renewal was a mistake and thought so even before it flopped post-DWTS in fall of '08. But ABC's weaker now than it was then, and with that precedent it's tough to call V completely gone. Airing out of Lost originals, it's been within a few ticks of Eli Stone's ratings, and Lost was much stronger then.
Bottom line is that most shows that have aired post-Lost have absolutely bombed. This one clearly places well ahead of some of those, and that might be enough for ABC to take a chance on it. I personally wouldn't renew, and I think it would be pretty likely to struggle the way Eli Stone did, but on a network like ABC that often greenlights bombs, the mediocre performers start to look a little better, especially since "mediocre" is about the best they've ever done with a show airing after Lost. Stay tuned...
3/27/08: Lost (R) 1.8 demo, Eli Stone 1.9 demo
4/3/08: Lost (R) 1.3 demo, Eli Stone 1.6 demo
4/17/08: Lost (R) 1.3 demo, Eli Stone 2.0 demo
3/11/09: Lost (R) 1.6 demo, Life on Mars 1.4 demo
4/22/09: Lost (clips) 2.9 demo, The Unusuals 1.4 demo
4/27/10: Lost (R) 1.8 demo, V 1.9 demo
Also worth noting that Life on Mars, The Unusuals, and a fifth show not included here, The Forgotten, all aired episodes that did worse with an original Lost lead-in than V's 1.9 last night.
Only one of the above five shows got a renewal or even an extension based on its post-Lost performance, and it isn't much of an argument to say "it's doing better than shows that got canceled!" But if you throw those out and just look at the one renewed show, Eli Stone, it's pretty comparable. Yes, the Eli Stone renewal came in spring 2008, when the writer's strike was just ending and there was a lot of uncertainty about development. Yes, Eli Stone was an in-house production and V isn't. Yes, I personally believe that renewal was a mistake and thought so even before it flopped post-DWTS in fall of '08. But ABC's weaker now than it was then, and with that precedent it's tough to call V completely gone. Airing out of Lost originals, it's been within a few ticks of Eli Stone's ratings, and Lost was much stronger then.
Bottom line is that most shows that have aired post-Lost have absolutely bombed. This one clearly places well ahead of some of those, and that might be enough for ABC to take a chance on it. I personally wouldn't renew, and I think it would be pretty likely to struggle the way Eli Stone did, but on a network like ABC that often greenlights bombs, the mediocre performers start to look a little better, especially since "mediocre" is about the best they've ever done with a show airing after Lost. Stay tuned...
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
The Long Shadow of "Lost"
Before ABC aired the extremely expensive pilot of a new show called "Lost" in September 2004, a lot of people were skeptical. But the ratings were really big. ABC had found one of its three shows that year that would start off its resurrection, they had tapped into an audience teeming with tough-to-reach young males, and they wanted more. And boy, have they tried.
There have been a lot of articles written about the failures of other shows created in the Lost vein. There were the Lost lead-outs, like Invasion, The Nine, and Life on Mars. People blamed the fact that "everybody goes on the Internet to discuss Lost after it's over." But it's not like the lead-outs that tried to go in a highly different direction (Eyes, The Evidence, The Unusuals) fared any better.
This year, ABC's churned out two more such shows from the Lost factory in Flashforward and V. They're both still on the air, so it's too early to call their fates either way, but I think they're both headed for the trash heap pretty quickly in TV terms. Flashforward is pulling mid-2 demos, while V has taken substantial drops in weeks 2 and 3. They may give a second season to one of the two as some sort of face-saving measure, but I don't see a sustained run as a big hit in the cards for either. ABC deserves some credit for not attaching these shows to Lost in a programming sense, for trying to create new audiences from scratch, the way they so successfully did in 2004. But in watching the shows, and in watching the promos for the shows, the Lost attachment is still clearly there.
First, it's the concept behind these shows, and this thread has run throughout the five years since Lost. Flashforward and V are what I like to call "aftermath shows." The pilot contains a big-ass incident and the series that follows it is about the aftermath of said incident. A plane crashes. The entire world blacks out for two minutes and sixteen seconds. They arriVe. That can be said of plenty of other Lost clones in recent years. Invasion began with an alien invasion. The Nine began with the end of a bank robbery. CBS' Jericho began with a mushroom cloud. It's become a formula for manufacturing genre television, and it's not necessarily the best formula. Plenty of people have held up The Nine as the banner show for "great pilot, but nothing interesting happened afterwards," but it's a problem inherent in this kind of show. How do you top the arrival of aliens or a worldwide apocalypse? Compared to most of this stuff, Lost's measly plane crash is small potatoes. That was something from which to build, not from which you have no choice but to downshift.
Second, the more blatant Lost connections. Flashforward isn't exactly named after an important term in the Lost mythology (the novel on which the series is based came out in 1999), but it may as well be. FF brought in an iconic Lost actor in a rather transparent attempt to get that audience interested. V, meanwhile, casts an iconic Lost actor in the lead role, and her friend and confidant (and maybe more?!) has the exact same name, Jack. (OK, maybe that wasn't really an attempt to evoke Lost, but it sure did for me when I heard Elizabeth Mitchell call Joel Gretsch "Jack" last night)
Does this stuff really work? Is the Lost audience so fanboyish that they will simply follow the actors that they know to their new shows and keep watching them over and over again? I like to think that Lost fans (hell, any fans) are a little more sophisticated than that, and it seems to be playing out that way. The number of Hollywood actors capable of "opening a movie" on their name alone is quite small at any given time, and on the TV front, it's probably also that way. But even if these concepts and these actors can open (and FF and V both premiered solidly), TV isn't just about opening. You've got to sustain, over a much longer period of time.
Personally, I think the Lost connections have actually backfired. It's not a connection that people who aren't big fans of Lost can make. But I am, so here goes. The Lost fanbase doesn't watch Lost for Dominic Monaghan, or Elizabeth Mitchell, or because it has time travel or because of what the show is "about." They watch because the show is a satisfying TV experience. In my opinion, it's one of the best TV dramas of the decade. So if you're saying in less-than-subtle terms that "this is the next Lost!" then that carries with it a certain expectation. I've enjoyed some of these shows a lot; I consider Invasion one of the more underrated shows of the decade, and I'm still liking V. But none of them are Lost, and none of them have met that inherent expectation.
So what does ABC need to do if they want to be in the genre business? They need to forget about Lost. That individual show has been a really successful hour for its network, but it's also taken over their development. Think a little more broadly. How about a less serialized SF show, maybe something along the lines of Fringe or The X-Files or Warehouse 13? Maybe the demo isn't there for this, but how about a Star Trek or Stargate type of space opera? (A less half-assed one than Defying Gravity, which was a co-production and too obsessed with mirroring Grey's Anatomy as well.) Don't base your promotions around your Lost alums. Truly start from scratch. My list of suggestions isn't great, but I think if they really want the young male audience they've loved having with Lost, they have to try something else. Maybe there will be some more failures, but they can't be but so much worse. Because "big incident, then nothing that interesting ever happens again" is a formula that is wearing out its welcome.
There have been a lot of articles written about the failures of other shows created in the Lost vein. There were the Lost lead-outs, like Invasion, The Nine, and Life on Mars. People blamed the fact that "everybody goes on the Internet to discuss Lost after it's over." But it's not like the lead-outs that tried to go in a highly different direction (Eyes, The Evidence, The Unusuals) fared any better.
This year, ABC's churned out two more such shows from the Lost factory in Flashforward and V. They're both still on the air, so it's too early to call their fates either way, but I think they're both headed for the trash heap pretty quickly in TV terms. Flashforward is pulling mid-2 demos, while V has taken substantial drops in weeks 2 and 3. They may give a second season to one of the two as some sort of face-saving measure, but I don't see a sustained run as a big hit in the cards for either. ABC deserves some credit for not attaching these shows to Lost in a programming sense, for trying to create new audiences from scratch, the way they so successfully did in 2004. But in watching the shows, and in watching the promos for the shows, the Lost attachment is still clearly there.
First, it's the concept behind these shows, and this thread has run throughout the five years since Lost. Flashforward and V are what I like to call "aftermath shows." The pilot contains a big-ass incident and the series that follows it is about the aftermath of said incident. A plane crashes. The entire world blacks out for two minutes and sixteen seconds. They arriVe. That can be said of plenty of other Lost clones in recent years. Invasion began with an alien invasion. The Nine began with the end of a bank robbery. CBS' Jericho began with a mushroom cloud. It's become a formula for manufacturing genre television, and it's not necessarily the best formula. Plenty of people have held up The Nine as the banner show for "great pilot, but nothing interesting happened afterwards," but it's a problem inherent in this kind of show. How do you top the arrival of aliens or a worldwide apocalypse? Compared to most of this stuff, Lost's measly plane crash is small potatoes. That was something from which to build, not from which you have no choice but to downshift.
Second, the more blatant Lost connections. Flashforward isn't exactly named after an important term in the Lost mythology (the novel on which the series is based came out in 1999), but it may as well be. FF brought in an iconic Lost actor in a rather transparent attempt to get that audience interested. V, meanwhile, casts an iconic Lost actor in the lead role, and her friend and confidant (and maybe more?!) has the exact same name, Jack. (OK, maybe that wasn't really an attempt to evoke Lost, but it sure did for me when I heard Elizabeth Mitchell call Joel Gretsch "Jack" last night)
Does this stuff really work? Is the Lost audience so fanboyish that they will simply follow the actors that they know to their new shows and keep watching them over and over again? I like to think that Lost fans (hell, any fans) are a little more sophisticated than that, and it seems to be playing out that way. The number of Hollywood actors capable of "opening a movie" on their name alone is quite small at any given time, and on the TV front, it's probably also that way. But even if these concepts and these actors can open (and FF and V both premiered solidly), TV isn't just about opening. You've got to sustain, over a much longer period of time.
Personally, I think the Lost connections have actually backfired. It's not a connection that people who aren't big fans of Lost can make. But I am, so here goes. The Lost fanbase doesn't watch Lost for Dominic Monaghan, or Elizabeth Mitchell, or because it has time travel or because of what the show is "about." They watch because the show is a satisfying TV experience. In my opinion, it's one of the best TV dramas of the decade. So if you're saying in less-than-subtle terms that "this is the next Lost!" then that carries with it a certain expectation. I've enjoyed some of these shows a lot; I consider Invasion one of the more underrated shows of the decade, and I'm still liking V. But none of them are Lost, and none of them have met that inherent expectation.
So what does ABC need to do if they want to be in the genre business? They need to forget about Lost. That individual show has been a really successful hour for its network, but it's also taken over their development. Think a little more broadly. How about a less serialized SF show, maybe something along the lines of Fringe or The X-Files or Warehouse 13? Maybe the demo isn't there for this, but how about a Star Trek or Stargate type of space opera? (A less half-assed one than Defying Gravity, which was a co-production and too obsessed with mirroring Grey's Anatomy as well.) Don't base your promotions around your Lost alums. Truly start from scratch. My list of suggestions isn't great, but I think if they really want the young male audience they've loved having with Lost, they have to try something else. Maybe there will be some more failures, but they can't be but so much worse. Because "big incident, then nothing that interesting ever happens again" is a formula that is wearing out its welcome.
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