Episode 5.08 - LaFleur - Ratings

Thanks to b3rt4 for the heads up.

The Lost vs. Lie to Me duel that looked so interesting earlier in the season now is only much of a battle in terms of total viewers. In the youth demos, Lost is now winning handily. Lie to Me will drop some in the finals due to American Idol overrun, and it’s half hour drops are still fairly noteworthy. It dropped from 11.14 million the first half with a 3.9/10 (rating/share) in adults 18-49 to 9.24 million in the second half hour with a 3.3/8.

Lost fares better with 1970s themed episode than the already canceled (but will air its final episodes) Life on Mars. Not up against American Idol this week, Lost bounced back up from a 4.4 to a 4.8 rating in adults 18-49. But a little bit of Lost overrun (I think, I wasn’t paying attention to times last night) helped the Life on Mars numbers below. LOM opened with 6.28 million and a 2.5/7 in 18-49s, but dropped to 5.03 million and a 1.7/5 the last half hour.

Source: TV by the Numbers

Here are ABC's spin on the numbers.

"Lost" (9:00-10:00 p.m.)
Catapulting from its lead-in by 5.8 million viewers and by 200% in young adults and gaining audience from start to finish, ABC's "Lost" won the 9 o'clock hour, defeating second-place Fox's "Idol"-driven "Lie to Me" by its biggest margins yet in both Total Viewers (+4% - 10.6 million vs. 10.2 million) and Adults 18-49 (+33% - 4.8/12 vs. 3.6/9).

* ABC's "Lost" registered its 7th week in a row as Wednesday's No. 1 scripted TV show in Adults 18-49. The ABC drama was also the evening's highest-rated scripted show in the other two key Adult demos: Adults 18-34 (4.5/13) and Adults 25-54 (5.2/12).

* "Lost" surged week to week by 5% in Total Viewers and by 9% in Adults 18-49 (2/25/09 = 1.01 million and 4.4/11).

Source: ABC