the game . Instead of clearing calendars to watch in real time and line up for the water-cooler conversation the next morning , fans of such shows as `` Lost '' and Fox 's similarly serialized `` 24 '' might just as easily record and time-shift their viewing , avoiding office chats until they watched on their own schedules . Or , even more aggressively , they might actively avoid the broadcasts of their favorite show , just for the delayed gratification of watching the entire season later on DVD -- gobbling up episodes at their own pace , and without commercials . It 's a very different TV world than in 1967 , when the long-awaited ending of ABC 's `` The Fugitive , '' with David Janssen 's Richard Kimble finally coming face-to-face with his wife 's one-armed killer , drew enough viewers to set a TV record for entertainment programming that beat even The Beatles on `` The Ed Sullivan Show '' three years earlier . Or in 1983 , when the finale of CBS ' `` M * A * S * H , '' with its end to the Korean War , drew 77 percent
-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- After eight months in hibernation , ABC 's `` Lost '' returns to television tonight to finally explain , among other things , the dazzling white light that ended the 2009 season not with a whimper , but with a bang . Was it a nuclear blast ? A quantum-leaping time shift ? A reboot to the story 's preflight origins ? These are key questions as broadcast TV 's most ambitiously complex drama series presents the beginning of the end -- the first of 16 final-season episodes before ending its time-rearranging , sympathy-shifting narrative . But the most important question of all , six years after `` Lost '' was launched in 2004 , is this : Who cares ? That 's not a flippant question , because both TV and the audience have changed in the years since `` Lost '' pulled back from Jack 's eyeball to reveal , slowly and masterfully , the panicked insanity of a remote island plane crash . Little more than a decade ago , `` Lost '' would have been riveting `` appointment television , '' but DVRs and DVD boxed sets have changed the rules of