Bye bye Lost. It was nice to be able to see you while you were available on a UK terrestrial channel. But now you’ve been bribed by an overly flush Uncle Sky, I’ll not be able to catch up with your progress.After the first two series of 24 were shown on BBC2, Sky nabbed it and I stopped watching. Now Lost is going the same way, and it’s not enough to convince me to invest in Sky coverage. Media Guardian reports:
Sky has poached US island drama Lost from Channel 4 for an estimated £20m. The satellite broadcaster has snapped up exclusive rights to series three and four and will air them on Sky One.Though the good news (?) is that C4 retained Desperate Housewives!
It is understood that Channel 4 negotiated with makers Disney's Buena Vista International Television for a month but was unable to reach an agreement.
Other broadcasters were invited to bid and Sky won the day. Channel 4 was given the option to match Sky's offer but declined.
4 comments:
bittorrent?
Private Eye had this to say on the subject:
"Congratulations to Rupert Murdoch, who last weekend snatched the UK rights to the next series of Lost from Channel 4 for £20m.
The drama shed nearly 4m viewers between the beginning of series one and last month's series two finale, but with an average audience of 2.8m it would still be a huge hit for Sky One, which has never reached anything like that figure with any of its own shows.
Sadly, that's unlikely to happen. In 2003 Murdoch staged a similar smash-and-grab raid on the BBC, netting the third series of 24 from the BBC, where its season finale had just pulled in an audience of 2.9m. The latest series of 24 debuted on Sky earlier this year - to a mere 807,000."
Anyway I hate those US series which never come to an end unless they're cancelled. Storytelling is all about endings, and with no endings there's limited satisfaction. That's why I lost interest in Desperate Housewives in series 2 (I think I caught about half of them, after watching all of series 1 assiduously). Just have the courage to end the damn thing already! But what are the chances of that when the moneymen are making the decisions? That's why we need to be grateful for the auteured shows we still have in the UK, from the likes of Ricky Gervais and David Renwick, who aren't afraid to end things when it's right to do so.
> bittorrent?
Not worth the effort. More to life than watching Lost! And besides, copyright is copyright, and if we don't all start respecting it, we can't complain when someone rips our content off.
"copyright is copyright."
Agreed. If I admire an artist or a writer, I positively want to pay them for their work, so I'd much rather buy the new Luke Haines CD (which I did, yesterday: o happy day) than get someone to burn me a copy.
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