Lost scheduling for next year

America has spoken about the scheduling of new episodes of Lost this year. More succicently put, America has bitched about the fact that since the start of 2006, new episodes have been sporadic with repeats of last season mixed in and confusing the overall continuing storyline.

Thankfully, the producers have heard our moaning and may be willing to do something about it. Damon Lindeloff, one of the producers, is floating the idea of doing Lost as three blocks of new episodes next year. Basically, Lindeloff's plan is "when there's new episodes, you get a block and when there's repeats, you get nothing but repeats." The plan is to have three blocks of eight episodes for a total of 24 new episodes next year. The blocks would coincide with sweeps months, of course.

The only downside I can see to this--the new season wouldn't kick off until October.

Which as a fan of The X-Files and having to wait until practically Thankgiving each year for the new season to start when it was on FOX (yet another reason to hate baseball...damn playoffs go on too long!), the wait for Lost seems short by comparison.

The upside is that the series can build to two natural in-season cliffhanger per year. You can still have the overall story arc, but you can have mini-arcs within it that will reward viewers without them getting lost (no pun intended) or forgetting details that are pivotal to the plot. In short, I think it makes a whole lot of sense and that is the best reason I can think of as to why ABC won't do it...