ComicBook.com has a preview of tonight’s episode riffing on the whole misleading advertising thing with ABC calling the clip show “an all new episode.” I routinely have a similar frustration with another of my series, Survivor, which tries even harder to dupe audiences than Lost does. Survivor’s game is to show a series of new clips in the preview seeming to set up new stories (when in fact they’re just background footage of stuff that happened episodes back.) And despite the fact that the clip show covers all of the contestants who have been kicked off so far the preview only focuses on those who are still in the game. Sure, they’re trying to capitalize on fans’ passion about the people still in the game but it’s at least as true that if they showed people who have already been kicked off it would alert fans to the misleading nature of calling it an all new episode.
With both Lost and Survivor the goal seems to be to get fans to tune in for the show expecting an episode that moves the story forward only to discover that they’ll have to wait another week. Apparently the fans are then supposed to say, “Well, I already gave up my evening and ordered a pizza. It’s too late to do anything else now. I might as well watch the clip show.” Still, if the producers are counting on the fact that the hardcore fans won’t abandon the series over anything so short term as a bait-and-switch they’re probably right in the overwhelming majority of cases. But the hardcore fans are more likely to know the scoop beforehand. It’s people like my family members who don’t think of Lost until the night it’s on who are most likely to get caught off guard, and they could get turned off eventually.
I’m sure some marketing executives have crunched the numbers on this one and decided it’s a great investment. I still question the sanity of it.
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