'Lost' finale broadcast live in eight countries, but Australians outraged
| Boston
The 'Lost' finale won't find Australia until Wednesday, and Aussies are downright determined not to let Internet chatter spoil the last chapter.
“NOBODY discuss 'Lost' or I'll delete you as a friend – we don't get to see it till Wednesday night in Australia,” one person wrote on her Twitter wall.
The ABC drama, which has become one of the world’s most popular television shows over its six supernatural seasons, concluded with simultaneous broadcast in eight countries this weekend. Australians, however, have to wait three more days to see the final episode on television.
''Ridiculous,'' comedian Wil Anderson, reportedly a Lost die-hard, told Australian newspaper The Age. ''If I was going to watch it on Wednesday, I could not go on the Internet at all for two days. I will definitely have watched it by Wednesday.''
The New York Times spelled out the problem in its headline this morning: " ‘Lost’ Fans Suffer From Blabbermouths Online."
In 2009, Lost was named the most watched show on the Internet based on viewers of episodes on ABC's website. The Nielsen Company reported that 1.425 million unique viewers have watched at least one episode on ABC's website, according to TV Week.
Each episode, according to Wiredset, provoked an average of 27,000 Twitter posts (topping “American Idol,” which averages 25,000 posts an episode). In January, the White House backed down on the date of Obama's State of the Union address when ‘Lost’ fans tweeted their outrage over a conflict with the show.
Fans in the US, Canada, Britain, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Israel, and Turkey enjoyed the Lost finale unspoiled last night and this morning. It was shown at 5 am in Britain, simultaneously with West coast transmission in the US.Time magazine says this is the first time that a drama show has broadcast live internationally.
“5:30 here in Italy, and I'm ready for #lost,” one person wrote on his Twitter wall.
“I'm from Ireland an it's 5:50am. Up watching Lost,” LeighanS posted on Twitter, explaining that she’d only had three hours of sleep and would need to run to school following the episode.
International reviews were upbeat. “The final episode, all two and a quarter hours of it, for which, being in Britain, I had to get up at five o’clock this morning, was terrifically exciting,” The Daily Telegraph columnist Michael Deacon wrote, though he added that the ending was “not entirely logical.”
Many fans expressed sadness that the show has ended. But 'Lost' ratings have dropped since the show began in 2004. Season One ranked 15 on television and averaged 15.69 million viewers per episode, according to statistics released by ABC. This held steady until Season Four, when viewers dropped to 13.4 million, and then to 11.05 million in Season Five.
ABC provides the 'Lost' finale for free on its website only in the United States, although numerous web pages have sprung up to help international web users access the episode via proxy servers. And iTunes offers the final season for a price.
One man in Italy apparently missed the television broadcast and was frantic to download it from the Internet.
“Nobody ruin LOST for me! I am in #Italy and impatiently waiting for it to download!”
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