American Broadcasting Company

The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) is a television and radio network in the United States, which also produces Lost.

Background

Back in the 20s of the last century, NBC and CBS were the two main radio networks available. NBC had two different networks, the Blue network and the Red network. In 1943, NBC sold its Blue network to Edward Novel, who changed its name to ABC, in 1944. The ABC network began its airings on April 19th 1958.

On February 9th of the same year, the ownership of ABC was transfered to UPT, and in 1953 it was owned by Capital Cities company. In 1966, ABC was eventually sold to The Walt Disney Company, which maintains its ownership until the present day.

Lost production

Pre-Production

Back at the time when ABC dropped to fourth place in the ratings, behind NBC, CBS and Fox, Lloyd Braun, the chairman and head of ABC, looked for a TV-series that could beat NBC's ER. He read two versions of a script about a group of castaways on an island, which he did not like. Eventually, he turned to J.J. Abrams, the award-winning scriptwriter, and creator of ABC's Alias. Abrams warned Braun that if he wants him to re-write the script, the show will no longer be about a regular island, but will be categorized as science fiction, to which Braun agreed.

After 6 days, the pilot script was born, with the efforts of Abrams and a new writer, Damon Lindelof. Lloyd loved it, and felt "Lost" will be the savior of ABC. With Braun's green light, the episode soon became the most expensive pilot ever made - $12 million. Although Lloyd felt satisfied with its quality, his bosses were shocked and regarded Lost as "a crazy project that is never going to work", and moreover, "a waste of time". Thus, before the shooting of the pilot episode ended on Oahu, ABC fired Lloyd, to be later employed by Yahoo! as the head of media and entertainment.

Production

Building 23 - Damon Lindelof's office

Touchstone Television produces Lost for ABC. The Los Angeles office of Lost's production company Grass Skirt Productions is located at ABC at Disney Studios at:

500 S. Buena Vista St., Bldg 22

Burbank, CA 91521

This site is the home base for the writers and post-production crew such as the editors. The official video podcast with Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse is also filmed here. These offices are also the home base for most of the executive producers of Lost, except Jack Bender and Jean Higgins, who are based with the film crew at the Hawaii Film Studio offices of Grass Skirt Productions in Honolulu, Hawaii.

All Lost-related production memorabilia are on display at the ABC Commissary at the Disney-MGM theme park in Orlando, Florida.

Internet

ABC's Lost website

ABC maintains several presences on the web related to Lost. These include the ABC website, The Fuselage, and Oceanic-air.com, a tie-in site that pre-dated The Lost Experience. However ABC was not involved in the production and distribution of the mobisode series, Lost Video Diaries.

ABC was one of the early adopters to offer video podcasts of several of its shows, available for download, including Lost and Desperate Housewives, on Apple's iTunes Music store. More recently, Lost episodes and clips are now available for free directly from ABC's website.

ABC website

Full-length episodes may be viewed for free on ABC's website

The ABC website includes a media section, the official wiki, previous episode viewing, screencap gallery, promotional gallery, and more. ABC's website is the first network website which offers full-length episodes online. The website offers episodes of Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, Lost, Ugly Betty, Day Break, Six Degrees, The Nine and several previews for these TV shows. The episodes are being uploaded to the website on the same day they are aired on ABC. Only viewers from the United States can use this service.

Note that The Fuselage is not from ABC, but rather from Lost's creative team, which is essentially a subcontractor to ABC. As such, the WHOIS information for Thefuselage.com does not list ABC.

Podcasts

See main article at Portal:Official 'Lost' Podcast.

ABC's Lost website also provides podcasts, where Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse discuss the show. In each podcast, which is released after an episode was aired, the two writers and producers discuss the previous episode, preview the next episode, and answer fans' questions. There were only two video podcasts up till now: one before the Season 3 premiere, and one before the he last episode before a 13 week hiatus.

Official Wiki

Main article: Official Lost Wiki In October 2006, ABC "adopted" a relatively small Lost encyclopedia, a wiki system based on Wetpaint software that had existed since May 2006. The website was moved to be a part of the ABC website and re-launched as the official Lost Wiki.

The seat numbers chart from the Oceanic website.

Oceanic-air.com

Main article: Oceanic-air.com

The Oceanic-air.com website is owned and operated by ABC (as indicated by the site's WHOIS listing), and not by Lost's creative team.

The site included a diary, as well as several hidden messages and a reference to the Mapinguari. The canon nature of some information from this site, such as unseen characters and their storyline, is marginal, as it was not part of The Lost Experience.

Programming

Lost's Influence

Lost (along with Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy among others) is often credited with helping to "revive" ABC in its maiden, 2004-05 season. Prior to that, ABC had been falling behind other networks with unpopular shows and low ratings. Thanks to Lost and other new shows of that season, ABC was revived as one of the stronger networks and has remained so since. The success of Lost also spawned subsequent attempts at various networks at serial dramas with continuous storylines, especially those with flashbacks and an element of mystery, such as ABC's own The Nine and Daybreak.

Current

Boston Legal, Dancing with the Stars, Desperate Housewives, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Good Morning America, Grey's Anatomy, Jimmy Kimmel Live, Lost, The View, and Wife Swap

Former

Alias, Charlie's Angels, Commander in Chief, Dharma & Greg, Fantasy Island, Full House, Home Improvement, NYPD Blue, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, The Drew Carey Show, Who's the Boss?, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Schoolhouse Rock, Monday Night Football, American Bandstand, Donny and Marie, The Dating Game, Family Feud, The Newlywed Game, The Lawrence Welk Show, Kung Fu, Batman, The Six Million Dollar Man, Battlestar Galactica, Max Headroom, The Outer Limits, The Fugitive, China Beach, Moonlighting, Taxi, The Partridge Family, The Odd Couple, McHale's Navy, The Love Boat, Leave it to Beaver, Mork and Mindy, The Addams Family, Barney Miller, Bewitched, Diff'rent Strokes, Full House, Home Improvement, Roseanne, Soap, Three's Company, The Wonder Years, Baretta, Matlock, The Mod Squad, Starsky and Hutch, Twin Peaks, Ryan's Hope, The Fall Guy, Zorro, Maverick, Politically Incorrect, The Bugs Bunny Show, The Jetsons, The Flintstones, The Mickey Mouse Club, Battle of the Network Stars.

See also

• Bad Robot
• Grass Skirt Productions
• Touchstone Television
• ABC Commissary - at Disney-MGM Studios theme park

External links

• ABC: Lost