An alert reader in southern California who wishes to be referred to as only “Stan the Man from the OC” wrote in to take me to task for not giving the network executives at the Mouse more credit for the way they were able to “obtain” more viewers for Eli Stone.

Stan the Man from the OC noted that many Lost fans are HARD CORE and that if ABC stuck even the littlest outtake of a “fake commercial” from Oceanic Airlines that was aired during the broadcast of Eli Stone, many Lost fans would hang on for the ride.

Stan the Man from the OC suggests that at least “several million” hard core Lost fans would stick with Eli Stone in order to see the Oceanic Airlines ad (which was certainly promoted heavily during the Lost broadcast) and that it was an excellent move by ABC and that I should give the Mouse more credit.

Stan the Man from the OC is probably right. I’ll have more of an idea of how right he is after the next airing of Eli Stone. But I think Stan makes a valid point. We’re quick to take the networks to task for idiotic stuff, so why not give them some credit when they innovate.

Karla Escolas at Chitika gives ABC even more props. The fake Oceanic Airlines commercial wound up promoting a web site: flyoceanicair.com and Karla gives ABC credit for brilliant TV to Internet convergence. I think she may be right, and I’ll contact someone at HitWise next week to see if they can break out the FlyOceanicair.com portion of the ABC.Com traffic so we can get some real numbers.

Even Stan the Man from the OC would tell you that speculation is great fun, but real data is better!