Economy Size Geek

I was a huge fan of the show Lost. It was complicated and mysterious. It was Sci-Fi and suspense - with decent acting and really great character development. There is a lot to love there. Last year I waited for the new episode every week. I knew that it would happen on Wednesday. That may sound like no big deal - but you have to understand I’ve been watching TV thru a PVR (ReplayTV) for 5 years. I never know when anything is on. I just sit down and watch whatever I have recorded.

There was a small problem. Lost is complicated. Over the year they slowly built an auidence. Either to make it cheaper by producing fewer episodes (cynical) or help the new viewers catch up (optimistic) ABC re-ran a lot of the episodes. Even more painful they would go back a few episodes and start again - so there would be weeks where there was nothing new.

Because of the story line - Lost has almost no syndication potential. That is a big deal when you consider how much revenue that ends up leaving on the table when your show is a success. This is a model that has worked well for “Reality TV” but they don’t care because the production cost on your typical “Reality”
show is nothing compared to a scripted hour long drama like lost.

At the end of the season, my fiancee got the DVD set for her aunt and got a copy for us. We ended up lending it to several people who all got hooked on the show.

Roll this year - the story moved much slower. Partially because you already knew a lot of the characters (optimistic) , and partially because since they know they are success they have to figure out how to make the story last (pessmitic). The re-run thing has been even worse. It’s gotten so bad I don’t even watch the show any more. It’s too annoying.

In the end, I’m just going to wait until the end of the year , and rent the DVDs. That way I can have a Lost weekend and call it done. That’s sort of a shame since I’m pretty sure everyone did that then the show will get cancelled since I don’t think ABC gets the revenue from the DVD sales (though they may).

So what’s the point of all of this - basically this - Lost is exactly the kind of show Everything Bad Is Good For You predicts would be popular. It’s complicated and involves a lot attention. The only problem is it seems like the network isn’t able to deliver the product in a way that makes sense. If it was a book it would be like having to go back 2 chapters everytime you sat down to read.

It makes me wonder if this is the beging of a larger trend that although TV has the potential to tell complex and interesting stories - the economcs of the model preculde them from doing that because the end goal of any network is to maximize revenue not enjoyment. So bring on the video ipod and more PVR tech to slice and dice the TV stream into one of those Long tail thingys that makes it easier to watch TV set at difficulty level 9.