Some show background info from A:

Writers, if they are lucky, are now hired by studios to read, write, and review possible TV show scripts submitted to the studio, or created by target writing teams, or writers who have told to create a series based on audience or potential audience marketing tests. This system kills creativity, so why am I saying lucky writers to be in the system? Ever heard the term "starving for your art"? Regular paycheck, and you can be creative in your spare time. It works!

Most series are generated in-house at a parent network or studio. Rarely, but it has happened (CSI), shows are the brain-child of a writer who has a creative idea, writes a script and a treatment, and successfully pitches the concept to the studio without already having a contract for development (JJ Abrams).

In September of 2003, or early October, ABC/Touchstone, which does indeed have JJ Abrams under contract to produce shows for them, approached him in a development meeting and said we want you to do a 60/d (60 minute drama)that would be a thematic competitor for the Survivor crowd. JJ passed initially, saying that it was too short-sighted.

6 (budgted originally for 2 leads, and 4 minor characters) characters stuck on an island after a disaster sounded boring to him. On top of that, the studio wanted to move on the series within a couple of months! Unheard of! Series develop over about a year and half, and the studio was saying months.

The matter was pressed in the meeting, and JJ, more to get the studio off his back than anything else, said "Fine. Let's do a treatment, and we'll see."

Clare, when a contracted producer is given that kind of job, he is usually assigned two writers from the studio to "create" the series. The producer (again, JJ) gives thoughts, idea, guidance, and criticsm as the series take shape. Damon Lindeloff, a studio stable writer, was one of the scribes who were told to make an idea treatment based on JJ's general thoughts. JJ's thoughts at that point? A plane, an island and about 6 people.

Each of the writers did their own seperate work, and Damon's was terrific! JJ chose Damon to head the writing of the series. That's like asking the mail boy to run the company, and in a movie, this would have been called a Cinderella situation.

What Damon turned in for the pilot (end of October, beginning of November) was brilliant. A small group of survivors are stuck on and island, and they have to survive together while trying to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives. It was Damon who fleshed out these people, giving each of them one thing that made them unique. Damon who visualized Locke as disabled, and suddenly cured. Damon who, as the casting was being conducted, made sure that JJ saw the survivors that you know and love today. Damon who made the monster.

The mail boy who became King.

The series was developed as a full run drama, with 13 episodes secured, which means Pilot, Pt. 1-2 through 12, or WTCMB. That was not the original episode treated, by the way, but let's keep going here.

In March-April, 2004, filming was done. The show didn't look good, and when it tested in Disneyland in June, 2004, it got the lowest auidence approval rating in Touchstone history! OUCH.

Why? The monster was there, but unmenacing. You heard it in the bushes, but not the power of it, and the layered sounds and the reactions. Also, the flashbacks were limited, shorter, used only to show what happened briefly in the minutes before the crash. And the survivors were too clannish in the original pilot. They instantly began to work together like a well-oiled machine. And, I'll say this, love was in the air much quicker in the pilot. It was looking like a poor man's Club Med.

At that point, it looked like it was going to flop. And Touchstone/ABC began making plans to use it as a short-run (a show that will probably end within the original order of a half season), or to cut it up and use it as a mini-series.

In late June, Touchstone/ABC held three quick meetings on whether to kill the series, which had been greenlighted early to rush it into the Fall 2004 line-up. They requested that the series be reshaped to end at the short-run, giving them an out if the series failed to pick up an audience. The scripts were tailored to have the islanders have some run-ins with the monster before fixing the radio, and in the last hour, calling for help. The show was set to end with the rescue helicopters coming in on the horizon.

JJ, who now believed in the series whole-heartedly, went to bat to save it. And he and Damon began to re-write, frantically, the first three hours.

They decided to use the FB concept as a basis for the episodes, and strengthened the Pilot episode with those and more conflict. Reshoots for the Pilot were quickly done in mid-July to late-July, and a new cut was shown to Oahu residents in early August. To everyone's surprise (Honoluluans are notoriously hard to please!), it was a resounding success.

At this same time, several key writers, David Fury and others, joined the show. If you believe in Serendipity, this was a case of it --- most of the writers involved, for one reason or another, would not and should not have been available!

The majority were vets of the Hollywood writing scene that for one reason or another, were suddenly free. The studio gives a show a writing staff (5 in this case), but the producer is free to hire other writers that he wants to bring in. Fury was in limbo waiting to start a company with a friend, and by sheer miracle, said yes. It was Fury who took Damon's concept of Locke, and gave him life. Randy the weasel, The Box Company in Tustin, CA, G-12, the Walkabout.....Helen.

When Touchstone/ABC heard the results of the screening, they allowed the submitted scripts to be shot. Now there was a rush to finish shows to keep up with schedule!

As you know, it all worked out. Hope that answers it for you, and I'm sorry if that was boring!