Lost - audience response

What has been the audience response from one of the industries you have studied? 

- Does audience response mean positive
- Nationalities
- Critics, high brow, low brow
- Has it influenced fans, production companies
- Has it lead to merchandise/ DVD sales
- viewing figures, series to series
- Forums

Lost has had a wide variety of responses from a wide range of people. This response need not be positive, it is true that many people do have a positive response to lost but many people have also had a negotiated or a oppositional response.


Average US viewing figures  (millions)
    Series 1 -  15.69
    Series 2 - 15.50
    Series 3 - 17.84
    Series 4 - 13.17
    Series 5 - 10.94
    Series 6 - 10.08

 As you can see from the figures above, Lost started a huge success at series one with over 15 million people tuning in for the first two series. This suggests that most of the audience had a positive response to the first two series and then in series three the audience peaked at over 17 million. This means that the audience has grown by over 2 million people and the majority are still having a positive response as they are still watching the program. However, after series 3, the figure steady begin to fall, which suggests that more of the audience are having a oppostitional or a negotiated response to the text. This could have been caused by the bizarre story-lines or too many unanswered question in the show.


It is fair to say that "Lost" has influenced fans a huge amount in a variety of ways. There are a number of websites created by lost fans, or Lostaways / Losties, dedicated to Lost. This shows that some fans have been inspired by lost or that they are so obsessed with lost that they create site such as Lostpedia ( http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page) and lost fans (http://www.losttvfans.com.  
    There have also been references/parodies of lost in a number of other TV shows and games, such as American Dad, Family Guy, Scrubs and Will and Grace.
   A interesting fact is after the first series was shown on TV, Harley's "numbers" were the third most common numbers chosen for the Inter-state lottery.