Lost Loses Its Way: ABC's Drama Losing Audience

ABC's primetime tour-de-force "Lost" may have jumped the shark. Ratings for the Wednesday night drama crashed to an all time low last week and seemed poised to continue sliding unless writers progress the plotline past seemingly meaningless flashbacks and innuendos that are supposed to serve as clues to the shows final out come.

Being a fan of "Lost", at times, is like having sex for three years and never getting to the good part. The drama stormed on the scene three years ago and drew in viewers with it's intricate subplots and prevailing mystery of what was going on with plane crash survivors on a mysterious island.

But, somewhere it lost its way. And its viewers.

The ratings for "Lost" topped 20 million in September of 2004 according to Neilson Media Research but fell to 12.8 million viewers last week. ABC responded to viewer complaints regarding repeats by essentially splitting the show into two seasons within a season not to interrupt its soap opera style serial line.

When "Lost" returned from its winter break on February 7^th, viewers did tune in - but then rapidly dropped back off solidifying that fans aren't being satisfied with the way the storyline is progressing.

Or not progressing.

One would need a veritable flow chart to follow the spiraling back stories of characters, clues as to why these people have been drawn together on this island, and at this point why the viewers should even care that these people are fatefully all stuck in a kind of psychedelic limbo.

If the writers and producers want there to be enough people left around when they finally reach the ultimate climax of this show, they need to start dishing out answers and soon. The little tidbits of plot progression just aren't satisfying anymore and the slow build-up to nothing has officially lost its charm.

And the numbers prove it.