ABC lineup a bit 'Lost'

PASADENA, Calif. — "Lost" is going to return on Oct. 4 for its third season. Well, part of its third season. A little more than a quarter of its third season. Six episodes.

Then, after Nov. 8, "Lost" is going to get lost again. For about three months. The other three-quarters of the season (16 episodes) won't start airing until early February.

It's the plan that ABC announced in May, although it still seemed to take a few critics by surprise here at the annual Television Critics Association press tour. It's sort of a modified version of what Fox does with "24," waiting until January and then running straight through May with few (if any) interruptions.

Why do it with "Lost"? Repeats of the show do poorly in the ratings, and it would be impossible to deliver 22 consecutive episodes to air because of the production schedule.

"It's a very, very difficult show to produce," said ABC Entertainment president Steve McPherson. "If we could run 22 straight in the fall, we probably would. But we just can't get the shows done in that amount of time."

So what ABC is going to do instead is air six episodes of "Lost," then 13 episodes of the closed-ended new serial drama "Day Break," then 16 episodes of "Lost." (The "Lost" numbers may change a bit. Maybe seven episodes in the fall; maybe 23 or 24 total episodes, which ABC would be happy to have.)

McPherson admits it's a bit of an experiment. And that he considered holding the show until after the first of the year, but "we felt this was the best choice, to not have it off from May until January," McPherson said. "We're going to see how it works. And we'll have to spend a fair amount of money marketing it and make sure that we launch both the fall and the spring piece."

ASKED BY ONE CRITIC (not me) about the "creative collapse" of "Desperate Housewives" last season, McPherson took some degree of umbrage. But then he pointed out that executive producer Tom Spezialy has left the show, leaving it "100 percent" in the hands of creator/executive producer Marc Cherry.

"I think everyone, including Marc, admitted that the beginning of last year we stumbled a little bit," McPherson said, because the show "answered so many questions at the end of the first season that he really spent too much time, I think, setting up the mystery (and) setting up the new arcs.

"And this year we're going to jump right in" and go back to being more of a "wicked comedy."