Lost is an Emmy award winning serial drama show about a group of survivors of a plane crash on a mysterious island. The show was produced by J. J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof, and Jeffrey Lieber. The musical score is composed by Michael Giacchino. It is produced by ABC Studios (Touchstone Television), Bad Robot Productions, and Grass Skirt Productions. Lost has become a worldwide success, with millions of viewers tuning in during each new episode. This success has come from the many turns and mysteries, flashbacks and flashforwards, and an international cast, making Lost an icon. So far, four seasons have aired (totaling 82 episodes), and will have a total of six seasons, 117 episodes.




Production:

The concept of Lost began in January 2004, when Llyod Braun, chairman of ABC at that time, came up with the concept of a show about a plane than crashes on an island. It was influenced by Castaway, Lord of the Flies, and Survivor. Baurn hired Abrams (who was working on Alias at this time) to start this new series, which was originally named Nowhere. Despite criticism about how the show would fail, it became an instant success.

The pilot episode was the must expensive pilot episode of any series, with a budget of $10 million. It aired September 22nd, 2004, on ABC in the United States. Lloyd Braun was fired by ABC's parent company, Disney, because everyone believed Lost was too expensive, and would not succeed.

The typical episode of Lost is 42 minutes long (excluding commercials and end credits). Almost all the filming has been done on Hawaii's island of Oahu. The beach scenes are filmed on the North Shore of the island. The interiors of the Dharma stations, and the caves are filmed at the Hawaii Film Studio. Urban scenes are filmed in Honolulu. Scenes involving countries outside the United States have also been filmed in Oahu, with the surroundings being transformed to look like a certain country. The only exception is two scenes in the fourth season, which were filmed in London due to Alan Dale (Charles Widmore) acting in Spamalot in London at that time.

Cast:

The first season consisted of 14 main roles, as following: Naveen Andrews as Sayid Jarrah, Emilie de Ravin as Claire Littleton, Matthew Fox as Jack Shephard, Jorge Garcia as Hugo "Hurley" Reyes, Maggie Grace as Shannon Rutherford, Josh Holloway as James "Sawyer" Ford, Yunjin Kim as Sun-Hwa Kwon, Daniel Dae Kim as Jin-Soo Kwon, Evangeline Lilly as Kate Austen, Dominic Monaghan as Charlie Pace, Terry O'Quinn as John Locke, Harold Perrineau as Michael Dawson, Malcolm David Kelley as Walt Lloyd, and Ian Somerhalder as Boone Carlyle. Many people auditioned for the part of Kate and Sawyer, resulting in new characters being created. Jack was originally going to be played by Michael Keaton, and would die from the monster attack, but was changed once Fox got the role.

Ian Somerhalder's and Maggie Grace's characters were killed off, and second season newcomers, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Mr. Eko, Michelle Rodriguez as Ana-Lucia Cortez, and Cynthia Watros as Libby joined the show. Later, these newcomers were killed off, and in the third season more characters were introduced, Henry Ian Cusick as Desmond Hume, Michael Emerson as Benjamin Linus, Elizabeth Mitchell as Juliet, Kiele Sanchez as Nikki Fernadez, and Rodrigo Santoro as Paulo joined the cast. After several characters were written off the show, the arrival of the Kahana brought new characters to season 4; Jeremy Davies as Daniel Faraday, Ken Leung as Miles Straume, and Rebecca Mader as Charlotte Lewis. Jeff Fahey (Frank Lapidus)was given guest appearance status.

Broadcasting:

Lost has always aired on ABC in the United States. During the first season, it aired on Wednesdays at 8/7c. It moved one hour forward to 9/8c at the second season. The time remained the same for the first 6 episodes of the third season. When it cam beck on 3 weeks later, it moved to 10/9c to avoid competition from other shows such as Fox's American Idol. Season 4 was the first time Lost aired on a different day, Thursday at 9/8c. The first 8 episodes remained on this time slot, but because of the WGA Strike, the final 5 episodes were aired at 10/9c.

Lost can be seen on three different stations in Canada. CTV is the main Canadian network it is aired on. SRC is the French-Canadian network, which show the show dubbed in French. ABC is also available in most areas of Canada. On CTV, the airing is usually the same time as that of ABC. SRC is roughly half a season behind.

In the United Kingdom, the first 2 seasons of Lost were aired on Channel 4. Sky One then bought the rights to air seasons 3 and 4. Virgin Media also airs reruns of the first to third season. Lost in the UK was 11 months behind the US, but caught up to only 4 days behind by season 3.

In Australia, Lost has always aired on Channel 7. The first three seasons were aired on Thursdays at 8:30PM. The fourth season aired on Thursdays at 9:30PM (with a few airing at 10:30PM). Lost airs six days after it airs in the US.


Ratings and Criticism:

According to a survey conducted in 20 countries, Lost is the second most watched show in the world, with CSI: Miami being the most popular. Below is a chart of the average ratings of each season, and the ratings of each season's premiere episode in the United States (in millions).

Season 1 premiere/average	Season 2 premiere/average	Season 3 premiere/average	Season 4 premiere/average
18.6/16.1	23/15.5	18.8/14.6	16.1/13.2

Despite have a strong number of viewers in the first two seasons, ratings started falling during the third season, which was broken into 6 episodes, and a 3 month break before any new episodes were aired. Also, critics started saying that the third season was "two slow", "not enough answers", "the producers don't know where the show is heading", and the poor introduction of what critics would claim to be the two worst characters in Lost: Nikki and Paulo. Season 4 managed to take back what the critics said, because of its quicker pace, and a better foundation for the plot (now the producers have set an end date for the show). However, the WGA strike in late 2007- early 2008 forced a month hiatus of Lost, and a shortened season. Also, the 10:00PM time slot has put people off the show, for being too late. The later time did create a boost in the amount of viewers that taped Lost on DVR, or downloaded it from iTunes or other sources.