The Big Question on 'Lost': Where'd the Audience Go?

Matthew Fox, left, and John Terry on Wednesday's "Lost" season opener, down about 5 million viewers compared to last season's starter. (By Mario Perez -- Abc)

Despite ABC's promise of more action and no reruns, a sizable chunk of viewers appear to have lost interest in "Lost."

Don't get seduced by the 18.8 million "Lost" drew for the debut of its third season on Wednesday -- that was about 5 million fewer viewers than the second-season opener. That's not what ABC hoped for.

The network noted that this season's first episode picked up where last season left off, and grew ratings-wise. But by the end of last season, "Lost" had misplaced nearly 6 million of the viewers who'd watched the season starter, and ABC suits were acknowledging they'd mishandled the show, letting too many reruns and plodding, head-scratching story lines drive away fans.

And let's not forget that last season's "Lost" finale, which clocked under 18 million viewers, faced the biggest "American Idol" finale ever, attracting more than 36 million viewers. This Wednesday, the season debut of "Lost" only faced a "House" rerun on Fox.

"You'll find a lot more happens this year in every episode than happened in all the episodes last year," show exec producer J.J. Abrams promised gushing TV critics in a phone call this week, while the show's other exec producers had promised Entertainment Weekly there would be much more "romance and action" this season.

And yet, yesterday morning, the raging debates on various "Lost" Web chats included the following (we cleaned up the typos for your reading convenience):

(a) which Stephen King novel Juliet and her book club were reading

(b) whether Juliet's name really was Juliet, given that she was heard being called Julie at least once, although, as one chatter noted, "upon re-listening it's hard to tell if [Benry] actually said 'Julia' instead of 'Juliette' but placed very little emphasis on the 'ette,' it could sound like an 'a' instead," adding, "I think this is gonna be one of those things that will be much debated and will divide the fandom."

and, our personal fave

(c) if an actress on the show appears to have had breast implants, does that mean the character also had breast implants and "if we are to assume that the character has breast implants are we to assume she got them ON the island or has she arrived on the island after having lived in the modern world?"

There was also a certain amount of Internet navel-gazing as to whether Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" "might have been an influence for this quasi-society that The Others have built and whether or not some of the technology that might be part of the Dharma Initiative acts as a visual forcefield to protect it from intruders . . . even radar."

* * *

This Monday is Do-Over Night on new CW, when the network rebroadcasts the first episodes of each of its Sunday black-cast comedies -- the episodes virtually nobody saw.

In the new TV season's first act of contrition, the CW has moved all of those sitcoms -- "Everybody Hates Chris," "All of Us," "Girlfriends" and new "The Game" -- to Monday night, where UPN, one of the two former mini-networks merged to form CW, had success with black-cast sitcoms.

New episodes of these series will begin airing Oct. 16.

The CW's Monday lineup -- the former WB's so-over "7th Heaven" and new barely watched "Runaway" -- are being moved to Sunday starting at 8 p.m. And instead of airing in Sunday's best time period -- 9-10 p.m. -- the "America's Next Top Model" rerun will be moved to the worst -- Sunday at 7, where the lollipops will duke it out with a slew of football overruns and pregame shows.

CW suits came to their senses after last Sunday's series debuts, when "Everybody Hates Chris," with guest star Whoopi Goldberg, suffered its smallest audience ever for an original episode -- 2.4 million viewers -- after which the rest of the sitcoms did only slightly better. The next night, "7th Heaven" logged about 4 million viewers, after which "Runaway" plunged to 1.9 million.

Flip-flopping the lineups should leave CW with just one lousy night, instead of the current two.

* * *

NBC has placed a full-season order on "Heroes," its new self-starting Monday show.

"Heroes" is the No. 1 new series of the season among young adults, tied with ABC's "Brothers & Sisters" but without "Bros. & Sis' " cushy post-"Desperate Housewives" time slot. "Heroes" is averaging about 13.5 million viewers overall.

Meanwhile, NBC says it will edit a scene in the pilot episode of the drama series about a bunch of young people who discover they have super powers. This after Emerson, maker of the In-Sink-Erator garbage disposal, sued the network over the episode, in which Indestructo Cheerleader Girl plunges her hand into the whirring disposal, grinding up her fingers, only to have them regenerate in seconds.

Apparently General Electric-owned NBC Universal couldn't find one of its own disposals for the bit, and the In-Sink-Erator brand name is pretty easy to spot in the shot, unless you covered your eyes when she jammed her hand down the thing, as we did.

An Emerson rep told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which first reported the suit, that it was a "trademark thing." The suit claims the scene suggests the In-Sink-Erator will cause debilitating and severe injuries, including loss of fingers, if you shove your fingers into it while it's operating. Which is what my mother always told me.