Lost Series Finale Somehow Only the 55th Most-Watched Ever

This seems like an easy puzzle to solve: since LOST had such a complex (convoluted?) plot, there's no way you could tune in to the finale unless you'd seen pretty much every episode of every season. The rest of the top 10 listed weren't nearly as linear as LOST. Plus, the thing was 2.5 hours ... I waited to catch it on Hulu to avoid about 50 minutes of commercials.

Does the Nielsen ratings include DVRs? If ever there was a need for a DVR, it was the LOST finale.

I'm sure if they could account for all of the Lost parties and those waiting for DVD releases it would jump in the rankings. But the shows on that top ten list were all top ranked - some sitting in the top 3 for ratings multiple seasons. Lost never got higher than #14. And unlike other shows that saw their ratings drop in their last season or two, not many people were going to tune in if hey hadn't been watching for a couple years.

Believe it or not, some of us just think it's a bad show. It's not really a mystery. This show has a huge following. Some people have never watched, some have rarely watched. Those people didn't watch the finale. Some people started watching and thought it was crap, those people also didn't watch. It isn't a show you can watch every now and then, the tune in to the finale.

Nielsen ratings are extremely inaccurate, not only by their sampling nature, but also the by the lack of measuring plenty of other factors.

The reading into the numbers and determining that it wasn't as successful of a finale is a bit subjective. There's never going to be a fair comparison of the numbers.

For starters, Nielsen only records a sample of audiences and extrapolate that to make it seem like it's the national viewership. (A huge portion of my undergraduate classes dealt with statistical analysis, so I can understand where a lot of the errors can possibly come out from) So the sampling has to be correctly identified. Also, if people were truly holding viewing parties, likely chances are, Nielsen records each 'tuned' TV as a single viewer, instead of, say 15 or even more.

Also, with the proliferation of delivery mediums, people don't necessarily need to watch the finale live. They can DVR (not sure if Nielsen catches this) or watch it later through ABC.com, Hulu or the really popular option of downloading through BitTorrent. This doesn't even count the iTunes download either. The fact is, there's options like this available that wasn't there in the 90s and before, where the only other choice was to tape it on VHS or wait for the tape/CD/DVD to come out.

Also, there's a whole lot of other TV channels available on cable today as opposed to having only a few public channels back in the 80s and not much people had cable subscription. That narrows your viewing opportunities, which probably helped in the viewership count for MASH, Cheers and others.

You gotta admit, this was a 2.5 hour finale. I mean come on. Of course 30 minute shows that doesn't require much buy in or understanding/knowledge of many little details previously shown in the series will have significant advantage over LOST.

I could go on and on. I'm not trying to defend LOST, but just want to make sure that people don't read so much into the viewership numbers. It's like trying to judge the quality of movies by box office receipts or quality of music by album sales.

There a many good points here. These ratings often don't account for those who DVR shows and many who wish to wait for DVD releases. I know many people who couldn't stand watching Lost and having to wait a week for the next one, especially since they started watching after the first or second season and got spoiled by watching them on DVD. They decided to then wait until the series ended and watch them all at once. It is a rather complex show and if you miss an episode or two you might as well skip the rest until you can see them all. Technology has added a great many variables to the standard rating method. I'm not sure it has kept up.

What about internationally? LOST is probably more popular abroad than half of the shows in the top 10.

In any case, Nielson's ratings are flawed and biased. Only 0.02% of US households (25,000) are sampled.

The DVR+7 hasn't been reported yet either...

OK so I agree with everything here.

Lost is a cult following. Neilson's ratings can't track the real cult. I DVR Lost and watch it 1-3 hours later as it is recording. Many of my friends go to LOST parties. Many people have watching buddies which means that there can be groups watching ONE tv.

It's a HUGE international phenomenon. When I lived in the UK, I downloaded it on iTunes and bought a season's pass. But there were MANY on the int'l forums that watched pirated TV.

Lost turned out to be a complete ripoff. I enjoyed the show for years, but part of that enjoyment was anticipation of how the writers were going to explain and tie-together all of the stuff that was happening. It turns out that they didn't have a clue. Anybody can write a bunch of wild happenings. The rip-off was the expectation given to the audience that there would be a viable explanation for everything. Why else do you think that people were scrutinizing the episodes, looking for clues, trying to find patterns to piece it all together? It turns out that there weren't any. I wouldn't have these two morons write my daughter's absentee note for school, let alone have them write another script.

I think these numbers are deceptive, at best.

Neilsen numbers do a lousy job of factoring in people who watched the finale in groups. Lost has always been the sort of show which inspired a lot of discussion. The article even mentioned "lost" parties. I'm not saying that the other shows didn't have these things, most of them certainly did, but it doesn't change the fact that these numbers are... urm... speculative at best. Put simply, if Neilsen was monitoring my household (which they aren't, I'm in the UK) my household 'represented' 6 other 22 people in total. My household is normally just me, my wife, and young daughter, but we watched it with 19 other people, who would otherwise be watching in 6 other households, where the TVs were off. How does Nielsen factor in any of this??? What's more, we watched it online, via my SlingBox which is with my family in New Jersey.

Secondly, the thing was 2 and a half hours long, many of us watched it on DVRs or online (legally or otherwise) to avoid the over 40 minutes of commercials. DVR+7 may make a dent, but i suspect that is only a fraction of the people who watched it by "some other means".

Thirdly, in an increasingly international world, the fact that it aired in the east earlier than the west meant that many many people in the western time zones or elsewhere in the world (not that international figures count towards the figures) were "forced" to watch the show online on the eastern schedule to avoid being spoiled by facebook "friends" etc. The ratings can't account for an east coast friends Slingbox, TV Tuner card or webcam (or many other methods) diluting this pool of figures even further still.

And finally, Lost is one of the most in depth, detailed, and truly "serial" shows in history. I could have seen only one or two episodes of some of these other shows and know enough to enjoy the finale. Not so with Lost.

Lost's viewer totals was always going to be lower, because for the finale to mean anything, you really did need to make the 120+ hour commitment to getting to that point. A lot more people will watch the finale, but will not do so until they are "caught up".

Plus, there are so many more avenues for entertainment today than when M*A*S*H* ended, it stands to reason that the pool will be yet further diluted. Within my lifetime, we have gone from 3 "Terrestrial" tv channels, to over 300 on Sky and Cable, plus online avenues like Youtube, SeeSaw (like Hulu in the states) and more illicit means... we will never see ratings like those of the "golden age" again.

I live in Japan so I didn't have the opportunity to watch it on the day that the series aired. However, thanks to torrents I was able to watch every episode. I thought it was the best series since Magnum P.I., which was more than 20 years ago. Of course not every question was answered, but in the end it was the relationships among the characters that was the most interesting. I thought the ending was wonderful. Now I'm going to watch it again to see if there was anything that I missed.

@KO

You said it! I sort of watched, with my wife wanting to watch it, for all six years, so I watched the last episode. And I cried for about half of it. That said...

All the people saying "it was about the characters, not the mysteries" are merely pulling the wool over their own eyes, ignoring the gaping holes and omissions in the story so they don't feel like they wasted 121+ hours of their lives watching this donkey's ass of a TV show.

I enjoyed parts of it, but overall it was obvious the writers had no effing idea where they were going or what they were doing, and the fact that they admitted as much doesn't make it OK. It just makes them look like what they are -- bozos who took people for a ride yet expect to be called geniuses.

Who gives a flying shit. Neilsons ratings have always been fairly inaccurate in estimating that actual number of viewers of shows. I live in Canada and I did a project in school where I asked 100 people if they watched the Lost finale and I got 46 out of 100. If I were to extrapolate that to the whole population of Canada then that would mean 14 million people watched the show. Lost certainly isn't about ratings unlike shows like American Idol and Dancing With the Stars. So I wouldn't get you knickers in a twist. TV itself isn't even as popular among todays youth

I had a feeling the ratings wouldn't be as high as some of the shows in the top ten...and it looks like it wasn't as high as any of them. But what others have said here is true, there are many more ways to watch a show now than there was back when M*A*S*H had its series finale. Now you don't have to watch it when it airs. Plus there is a lot more on TV not to watch with so many stations, so comparing the ratings to Lost's finale with M*A*S*H's or something else in the top ten isn't a very good comparison. Plus, most of the people interested in watching the show had been watching all along, not just jumping in late to watch the series finale.

However, one reason that so much emphasis gets put on Nielsen ratings is because networks are more interested in how many people watched live...because people watching live watched the commercials. When people DVR are a show, they typically skip the commercials. If they watch on Hulu, they aren't watching as many commercials and if they download a torrent, they aren't watching any commercials. Commercials provide the funding the produce the show, so it's important to networks to have high live ratings.

How can they tell?? There were 20+ people at the LOST Finale party I was at, all watching on one TV. I'm sure we weren't the only people watching as a group.

I guarantee groups weren't getting together to watch the finale of M*A*S*H*, and I don't remember people getting together to watch the Friends finale, either.

Lost, until the last 10 minutes, was written for intelligent, inquisitive people. That's why the numbers were low after the first season and no easy answers were provided. The average American isn't very bright and doesn't want to challenge themselves. We want to consume garbage food and garbage entertainment and never open our minds. That's why we are ugly and intolerable. BTW: Flash Forward was canceled due to low ratings.

I agree with you KO. I feel SO cheated. I enjoyed Lost because it was different and I love a good mystery. I hung on because I was interested in what was going to happen. Then they cheat us with that ending....it explains nothing and I think you're right, the writers had no idea where they were going with anything....the smoke monster, the dharma initiative, Richard, the time travel, rules of the game (when Ben's daughter was killed)....they had no clue what they were doing, but they sure suckered us in didn't they?

"Believe it or not, some of us just think it's a bad show. It's not really a mystery. This show has a huge following. Some people have never watched, some have rarely watched. Those people didn't watch the finale. Some people started watching and thought it was crap, those people also didn't watch. It isn't a show you can watch every now and then, the tune in to the finale."

Hey Jon,
Profound statement. For about 0.05 seconds i thought you made a point. However, you speak as though those conditions are unique to LOST. I didn't realize that all the shows on the top ten were indisputably watched AND enjoyed by every person in the country.

You did say one thing with some validation though:
"It isn't a show you can watch every now and then, the[n] tune in to the finale."
TiVo? DVR? iTunes? Not to mention illegal downloads. I love this show, but I NEVER watch it live. We live in an age in which technology has provided so many (in many cases, more appealing) options for our viewing pleasure.

If you hate commercials, I know you're with me on this one. (And I was a marketing major.)

And for those of you who have made the choice NOT to watch LOST.. I suggest you do. It is an incredibly unique show unlike any other on the market, and it forces you to THINK and use your IMAGINATION. Strange, I know. But wonderful all in the same.

The idiocy of the American public is shown in these numbers. Not that many people watched LOST because most Americans are too stupid to understand it. But they can understand drivel like American Idol no problem. As for M*A*S*H* another poster said it best: it aired in the 80s when there were many fewer channels to choose from. It was an awesome show and the finale was great but I actually liked the LOST finale better, and that's the first time I've ever said that.

Lost seems losted at his finale.

One thing that has not been considered is the growing feeling during the last Season that we were not going to get good answers to the mysteries. I was pretty certain of that before I sat down to watch the Finale.

The people who did watch were the diehard fans who love the Characters and wanted to see how they ended up. Those people are thrilled since they got to find out that 1/2 of the last Season was a freaking 'Happily ever after' style of Epilogue.

If they had actually intended on answering the mysteries I am pretty certain the viewing numbers would be bigger.

Oh and to whoever said that people did not hold Finale Parties for MASH and Friends I am afraid you are quite mistaken. MASH in particular was a big deal for a whole lot of people.

Lost is just another TV show and one that will be remembered for the 1/2 of the audience who felt completely ripped off and wished they had never bothered to watch.

New media has taken over. Ratings for all shows will continue to go down... Pointless article.

Come on folks, you don't have to take it personally that your favorite show didn't have all-time high ratings.

LOST is a social phenomenon. I never watched it by myself, it was something to watch and discuss and wonder about. The Nielsen ratings can't possibly account for all the people at LOST parties like I was at, or all the people in the rented out theaters that were broadcasting the show. I suspect there were far more people watching the finale of LOST (and the rest of the series) than the ratings indicate.

Umm..im gonna venture ot and say that the ratings were lower than expecting because of the DATE & TIME change. to change the date to a Sunday rather than keep it on its regularly scheduled date forced people to record and/or watch online....