Will "Lost" Find Its Way?

Going down a hatch is one thing. Climbing out of one, as Lost is learning, is another.

Based on Wednesday night's ratings, the ABC adventure-thriller-mystery hybrid remains in recovery mode after an unpopular resolution to the series' first-season cliffhanger.

Lost's third-season opener was watched by 18.8 million, ABC said. And while that was more than enough to make it the night's most-watched show, and should be more than enough to make it one of the week's most watched shows, it wasn't near enough to match its own second-season premiere.

Last fall, 23.5 million checked out the Lost launch party. The big premiere was driven by interest in the big cliffhanger from the show's first-season finale. In that episode, aired in May 2005, the plane-wrecked castaways looked down one long, mysterious hatch.

What were they looking at? What was in the hatch? The questions simmered during that summer; the answers fizzled the following fall. As revealed during the 2005-06 season, the hatch led to a tunnel that led to a bunker which basically housed a 1980s home computer set-up, dot-matrix printer and all.

Oh.

The letdown seemed to take down the show's ratings--from 23.5 million viewers for the second-season premiere to 17.8 million for the second-season finale. (Airing opposite American Idol in the spring didn't help, either.) In the end, Lost's audience actually shrunk about 3 percent from its first season to its second.

That Wednesday's numbers were actually up 5 percent from last spring's finale could be a sign that the new the Others-kidnapped-Jack storyline is working.

Or, it could be a sign that American Idol isn't on yet.

Lost never lacks for mystery.

In other TV tidbits:

• ABC's new landlocked Lost, The Nine, premiered Wednesday before 11.9 million.
  
  Compared to its competition, it did all right. CBS' CSI: NY ran first in the 10 p.m. hour with 15.7 million, while NBC's Kidnapped ran aground with about 5.3 million.
  
  Compared to its predecessor, it did lousy. Last fall, Invasion opened up with 16.4 million in the same time slot. An unsettling reminder for The Nine: Invasion was canceled.
  
  
• NBC has given the full-season go-ahead to Heroes. The cape-eschewing superhero series is the first new fall series to be so rewarded. It's averaging 13.5 million viewers through its first two airings, the network said.
  
  
• Fox has not canceled Happy Hour. As promised, the little-watched sitcom will return to its Thursday time slot in November following the conclusion of the baseball playoffs and the World Series, the network said Thursday.
  
  
• In other Fox scheduling news, Justice is moving from Wednesdays to Mondays, Vanished is moving from Mondays to Fridays, and the new quiz show The Rich List is heading to Wednesdays. All tweaks are effective post-baseball.
  
  
• How bad was last Sunday's comedy-block launch for the CW? So bad that the network has gone back to the blackboard.
  
  Come next Monday, it'll rerun the sitcoms that nobody watched last Sunday. Then, starting Oct. 15, the shows that used to air on Mondays, 7th Heaven and Runaway, will air on Sundays. And then starting Oct. 16, the old Sunday comedies will begin airing new episodes on Mondays.
  
  To recap: In order to avoid the CW comedies, tune out the network on Monday, not Sunday. In order to avoid Runaway, down to 1.9 million viewers this past Monday, just keep doing what you're doing.
  
  
• The downsized Saturday Night Live began its 32nd season before 6.7 million, NBC said, up 2 percent from last fall's start.