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The news that "Lost" only garnered an audience of 14.5 million viewers has to cause some concern to ABC (DIS) as it returned its former powerhouse to the screen. It was the smallest audience they've received for Lost for an original episode.

Even worse news for them was that among the key demo of 18-49-year-olds, it was also the smallest audience. This is even with moving out of direct competition with "American Idol" by placing it in the 10 p.m. time slot.
 
It seems that the show will hold its younger viewing audience as it did score its second highest rating in the 18-34 demo for the season, but wasn't able to reach the broader audience that it originally appealed to.

The network desperately tried to spin a bunch of positives out of the outcome. First they mentioned that it was able to increase from its lead-in - which was a recap what had happened - by 6 million viewers.

Another positive they tried to put forth was that the show was strong against  CBS's (CBS) "CSI: NY" in the 18-49 demo, beating them by 42 percent, while beating them by 94 percent in the 18-34 demo.

Of course it doesn't really mean anything because of the targeted audience that "CSI: NY" reaches. You can make statistics say just about anything when you don't take the whole picture in.

No matter how you look at it, this is a disaster for ABC. If this continues for the rest of the season, it will probably be put down as missing out on a great opportunity for a long-term, highly-viewed program that commanded top advertising dollars, by a series of mistakes that could have been avoided.