LOST Premiere Tallies More Than 580,000 Episode Starts

Network Site Garners Double-Digit, Year-Over-Year Gains in Uniques and Page Views

Following last Tuesday's successful premiere on ABC, where it ranked as the night's No. 1 scripted TV show and was watched by over 12.1 million viewers, "Lost" drove record online viewing at ABC.com on Wednesday with more than 580,000 episode starts of the final season's premiere on the site, an increase of more than 34% over last season's "Lost" premiere, according to internal data. Overall, Wednesday marked ABC.com's highest full episode viewing this season, with more than 1.17 million total full episode starts.

On Tuesday, leading up to the "Lost" Season 6 opener, ABC.com saw more than 1.8 million unique visitors and delivered over 7.4 million page views, a 15% and 43% increase, respectively, over the previous year's premiere date, based on data from Omniture.

Additionally, visitors to ABC.com logged more than 2.2 million video views of "Lost"-related short-form content on Tuesday, an increase of over 32% compared to last season.

Consistently one of the most-viewed series on ABC.com's full-episode player, "Lost" continues to connect with fans across the web. This season, ABC.com offers highly-interactive, community-driven features, including user-created Top 5 lists, which allow fans to arrange, rank and share their personalized lists of show-related favorites, and Episode Commentary, where fans can not only access commentaries created by series' insiders, but also create and share their own commentaries for each episode. Additionally, the site will soon unveil a Fan Art Wall, an interactive area for fans to upload, view and rate "Lost"-themed art created by fellow fans, and also give fans the opportunity to participate in the Ultimate "Lost" Fan Promo Contest, providing users a "mash-up" tool to create and share their own "Lost" promos with a winning promo to be featured on-air.

"Lost" airs regularly Tuesdays (9:00-10:00 p.m., ET) on ABC. The series' finale is set to air as a primetime event on a special night on Sunday, May 23 from 9:00-11:00 p.m., ET. Preceding the finale will be a recap special from 8:00-9:00 p.m., ET.

Source: ABC