I was watching the Spurs vs. Lakers game on ABC when I heard one of the announcers give LOST a promo:
LOST is back Wednesdays at 9, 8 central on ABC. Last Wednesday 20 million people returned to the island, making this season’s premiere of LOST bigger than ever.
ABC also used similar wording in an on-screen promo. WTF!?
Better than ever? Perhaps. I caught a preview of the episode that airs this Wednesday at 9pm and loved it! But better is subjective, bigger isn’t.
I don’t really have a problem with the 20 million number. There are a number of ways ABC could’ve come up with it that are legitimate. There’s the total audience measurement — those who watched at least six minutes. They might have lumped in some numbers from the clip show that preceded it, the reruns from Saturday night, and for all I know, they lumped in some web viewing as well. But however they came up with the more than 20 million number doesn’t really matter. I buy that there’s a way to come up with that number. It’s totally misleading, but that’s OK, that’s commonplace and I don’t have a big problem with that.
What I do have a problem with is using that 20 million to say that this season’s premiere of LOST is bigger than ever. Any way that you could possibly calculate today’s viewing versus past viewing there is simply absolutely, positively no way that it could be true that LOST is bigger than ever.
LOST averaged 11.4 million viewers in the overnight numbers for the premiere — a series low for season premieres. And almost 5 million lower than the season four premiere, which up until now was the lowest-rated season premiere for LOST. In fact, the season four recap episode that aired before the season four premiere averaged more viewers than the season five premiere.
So is LOST bigger than ever? The implication was LOST was bigger than ever because of the number of people who watched the premiere. Again, there is absolutely no way that is true. But it’s very probably true that LOST costs more to produce than it ever has, so at least in that sense it is bigger.
If a gazillion people were watching the show (which I personally think would be really cool) and if more people than ever were watching I wouldn’t have a problem with “Hey, a gazillion people are watching. More people than ever!!!” with the implication that you should watch too. But since it’s actually not true, it rubs me the wrong way.
TV networls do this all the time. They show 2-3 episodes in a night/week, and say “Look we have 30 million people watch our show!” When it is really just 10 million people watched all three episodes.
again, I don’t mind the number inflation. but comparing the number inflation this year to the number inflation last year, the result would be smaller than ever, not bigger than ever.
I hear ya. I heard ABC make the same claim during the game and came online for the sole purpose of trying to verify it, especially since I had read the actual overnight ratings on Friday. I agree that it’s probably misleading or wrong for ABC to promote this arbitrary number, but conversely, I think it is probably more in line with actual numbers. In fact, it’s still probably on the lower end given this age of new media — it’s the number one selling tv show on itunes, plus you can watch it On Demand for free, or online. ABC isn’t the real problem here, it’s the obsolete Neilson rating system. I can’t believe we don’t have a more accurate tracking system in place given today’s technology.
Maybe because The Season Premiere was UP from the last Season Finale
Cool, while that’s true among 18-49 year olds, that is then a 10th of a point tick up from the lowest-rated season finale of the series. Hardly “bigger than ever”. But sure, “Bigger than our lowest-rated finale ever”
Adam, I’ve seen enough online, itunes and VOD data to conclude that for now, all of that will amount to significantly less viewing than just the week’s worth of DVR viewing that we won’t see for a couple of weeks. All the noise about new media, for now, is mostly noise. Live viewing via TV is still, and by a large margin, the biggest chunk of viewing. This may not be true for everything — short clips, especially, or perhaps even Obama’s inaugural address. But it’s certainly true for LOST.
This isn’t the most egregious distortion by ABC’s parent company, Disney, in its marketing efforts the past few weeks. After its film Bedtime Stories finished second in the box office its opening weeks, Disney ran promos calling it the “#1 Comedy in America.” Except the top box office film that week was Fox’s Marley & Me, which by most accounts is a comedy.
So what gives, Disney?
Well lets face it, they certainly can’t air a promo saying “the lowest watched season premiere ever” but they probably should have gone with something other than a total lie….
America, I think this is more egregious, but it’s probably merely a matter of taste. In the case of Bedtime Stories, they at least have some wriggle room with “comedy” vs. “romantic comedy”. Declaring a smaller number to be bigger seems more heinous to me. But hey, “smaller, it’s the new bigger.”
What’s funny is that they feel the need to tout the numbers at all in a promo. I can understand a press release, but with a show like LOST are people suddenly going to tune in because 20 million people did? I’m sure they figured out over the past four years whether or not they need to watch it to be able to contribute around the water cooler.
Maybe because this is the first Season Premiere that is TWO hours, instead of 1 episode? The Pilot doesnt counts.. haha I really dont know.
Btw, Disney is not the only one who makes thinkgs like ‘#1 comedy on America’, NBC and MSNBC were saying they were first in the election coverage (when CNN or ABC were fist.. I really dont remember)
Lost was good the first season, now its stupid.
Problem with doing this is that Disney is a publicly traded company and potentially this can be interpreted as misrepresenting the state of business. Frankly I think the SEC should investigate publicly traded media companies that lie about the strenght of their business like this for potential civil or criminal violatons.
Maybe they added both hours together? Anyways, who cares about ratings with Lost? It already has a guaranteed end date. The lower numbers are probably better for the show, since the suits at the network might not be tempted to mess with it last minute.
RJ, if you stopped watching Lost in the second season.. you should watch it know. The third (after the sixth episode) and fourth season were mindblowing.
now, not know.
Yeah. Ratings dont really matter for Lost. It’s going to end next May despite what the ratings are..
Ratings aren’t that bad anyway for a heavy serialized show that’s in its fifth year….
How on earth is this newsworthy? Read some of the press releases you issue, where they try to use statistics to spin horrible, horrible ratings. Where are the headlines saying “The CW misleads” or “NBC spins?”
Basically, ABC’s promo could be summed up by saying “LOST gets good ratings, you should watch it.” So you’re ok with them throwing out the “misleading” 20 million number, but not with them saying it’s bigger than ever? Gotcha.
Considering the flocking of viewers over to cable, LOST is still about as big as it ever has been. I don’t see many fifth season or longer serial shows still on broadcast TV, do you? Take a chill pill…
Vader, this is now the second time you’ve demonstrated being extra-sensitive with regard to the coverage of the LOST ratings. I’m sorry that you can’t see that I am not bashing the show (or in this case, even its ratings) but ABC. Is it newsworthy? C’mon. Almost *none* of the ratings information is that newsworthy, but this is a blog about ratings, and the ABC promo was new, making it was worthy enough for me. You don’t like it? Fine, don’t let the door hit ya on the way out.
Seriously, if you’re going to be a sensitive wuss every time the words “series low” are typed in conjunction with LOST, just to be safe, you might want to avoid this blog until June…
[edit] Wanted to chime in about the press releases also. 95+% of the releases we post, we post simply because they include a lot of data that isn’t available in the overnight or weekly reporting. At this point we’re posting dozens of them a week and there’s just not time to debunk them. Plus, after you have debunked the first few, it gets old, so we merely precede the press releases with “Via XYZ network press release” and leave it up to the readers to realize that as it’s a press release. Believe me, if the ABC press release for Wednesday night would have insinuated that LOST’s premiere was bigger than ever, Bill and I probably would’ve done separate posts debunking it!
P.S. this Wednesday’s LOST is awesome…
Gee Robert, it’s always nice to get told to leave after pointing out someone’s hypocracy. Nevermind that two other people said similar things, but because I had the gall to come out and ask why we should care about this when it goes on everywhere, I should leave? Yeah, makes total sense to me… Oh wait, I forgot I’m a “sensitive wuss.” My bad.
BTW, nowhere in my first post did I ever remark anything about arguing it wasn’t LOST’s season low. I don’t know where you got that from, or the other post where I merely stated your headline was incorrect in the end. I don’t see the point of arguing about ratings for a show they haven’t mattered for in two seasons.
I’m sorry that I won’t be a mindless fool agreeing with everything that you say here. Apparently, that’s what you must want…
I added to my previous comment before I’d seen your last two, but:
1. this *wasn’t* a post about LOST ratings, it was a post about ABC seemingly unabashedly lying (way worse than anything in the press releases, I think the PR people for the nets on balance do a pretty good job of being accurate with their spin)
2. I am aware that barring disaster, LOST’s ratings have absolutely no bearing on its renewal prospects, but we will definitely comment on the ratings numbers anyway.
I’m sorry that you want a blog of only posts that you don’t find critical of a show you like even when they were not actually critical of the show you like. Just because I love the show doesn’t mean I won’t comment on series-low ratings or ABC spinning that into “bigger than ever”/
Yep I seriously agree with you, Vader. Well said..
We see whats happening to heroes. It starting to go downhill only in its 2nd season.
I know this is a moot point, but what kind of an agreement did they get for the rest of the series – a legal one or just a verbal agreement? I agree that a 5.0 in the demo is nothing to worry about.
Did either Robert or Bill have to write a review of the first 3 episodes in a newspaper or something in order to watch them before everyone else?
All of ABC’s shows are down in the ratings. Back in their prime days, ‘Desperate Housewives’ and ‘Greys Anatomy’ would reach 21-25 million viewers on a weekly basis, while ‘Lost’ always trailed with about 16-18 million. The highest rating ever for Lost was the Season 2 premiere which brought in 23 million viewers (That same week the Season premiere of ‘Housewives’ had 28 million viewers).
Anyway, my point here is…now Both Greys and Housewives are only reaching about 13-14 million viewers per week. ‘Lost’ has managed to shrink it’s gap by only 2 million viewers…it has caught up to those shows by default.
I would also like to point out Nielsen Ratings isn’t really a big factor for a show like ‘Lost,’ because it has a cult following…meaning it makes way more money with Dvds, merchandising and other promotional tie ins than Housewives and Greys ever would. Lost is more profitable than the other their other two shows in that sense.
Ben, I’m the LOST fan (I don’t think Bill watches it). I didn’t have to write reviews, and hopefully ABC won’t take away our media credentials after this post. I’m definitely not critical of either the show — again, I loved this Wednesdays episode — and the PR folks at ABC/Disney have been pretty great to us. But I can still not like “bigger than ever!” when it’s just not true!
I’ll leave the reviews to those better suited to write them, but I’ll gladly promote Lost (again, LOVED the third episode!). I am not much into spoilers, and even if I was ABC swears you to an oath of not giving away any information in advance.
@Sam, though I generally agree with everything you wrote, I would modify it to “Neilsen ratings aren’t as big of a factor for a show like LOST” ABC still wants to make as much advertising revenue as it possibly can. At least sub-consciously (and more likely consciously) that’s a big deal for ABC or it wouldn’t feel the need to puff it up in such a misleading way in the above referenced promotion.
Again, I don’t have any problem with ABC touting the 20 million figure, and I am not at all worried about LOST being cancelled, or not coming back for its final season but to suggest that more people are watching it than ever just isn’t true.
Robert, I am a Lost fan, and I totally agree with you…..but ABC has to make something to increase ratings for the show, like every business you can manipulate the information like you want….I’m pretty sure that in some way adding Wednesday rating + Saturday + TiVo + ITunes + ……. you could get 20 Million….
But for all those who think Robert its attacking LOST, I don’t think so, nobody can say that LOST its not one of the biggest show running this time, and it will be remembered like that for many years……..I’m sure that in the future many shows will try to make the same, and they would failed.
Saying LOST it’s not a good show, that’s a real lie……
Sorry for my writing mistakes but English it’s not my mother language
LOL! but if you think about
11 million from episode 1 of season 5 plus 11 million from episode 2 of season 5 is more than 20 million. I think ABC meant it that way.
I don’t really see the point of there lie. Advertisers are still going to look at the actual Nielsan numbers, and pay accordingly.
At least it is not as bad as NBC’s promo for My Own Worst Enemy: “The show everyone is talking about…”
Haha Nathan, that was “the new HIT everyone is talking about”. It was cancelled like a week later, so yeah, I’d have to agree it’s not that bad… Close though!
I saw the 20 million promo too on Thursday or Friday and I hadn’t yet checked here for the ratings, so I was all happy and then find out it had only a little more than half that and was the lowest rated premiere.
I do agree with Robert, it’s fine to pump up the numbers since all the networks do it and it technically isn’t a lie if the number can be justified, but the claim it’s bigger than ever shouldn’t have been made. I can see the reasoning, that if you hear that many people are watching something, maybe you should check it out. However, it’s nearly impossible to jump into LOST so I don’t see how that logic works for this show.
As for those ratings, the numbers are what they are, and while I hoped for better, there really wasn’t much chance the 5th season premiere could be higher than any of the previous ones. DVR bump percentage wise I expect to be higher than it’s been though since more DVRs are in use than last year, so we will see what that does. Plus, the ratings slide in Season 3 is largely how the writers got their end date set so we don’t really need ratings to go up since that might make ABC try to push for a season 7, we just need them to hold their own and not plunge too far. To be honest, I’m happy that it is still being watched by as many as it is considering it is in year 5, has been one overall major storyline, and is so complex that it can turn a lot of people off that will likely never be able to come back. Anyway, when all is said and done, if I’m not mistaken, the show should still pop up on ABC’s renew/cancel index at #3 behind Housewives and Anatomy. So despite having it’s lowest premiere, it still relatively is performing similarly to last season for ABC.
They may have said it’s bigger than ever because it was two hours long?
i was wondering lol i didnt think it had 20 million viewers lol
I knew that commercial was false. Fox claims American Idol gets higher ratings than it actually does, too.