Extra hours will cause some schedule upheavals

Fans of "Grey's Anatomy" and "Lost" will get a little more of the shows they love this season. Eventually.

ABC announced Monday (April 14) that it's adding another episode to each show's season, allowing both to have two-hour season finales. That will make for 17 total episodes of "Grey's Anatomy" for the season and 14 of "Lost" (two short of the initially planned 16).

However, because ABC had scheduled its post-writers' strike episodes so tightly, the finale of "Grey's Anatomy" will force "Lost" off the air for a week in May.

Both shows had been scheduled to end their seasons on Thursday, May 22. Now, though, "Lost" will cede its place on the schedule that night to make room for the two-hour "Grey's Anatomy" finale. It will return on Thursday, May 29 for its own two-hour finale. (Both finales, incidentally, will fall outside Nielsen's May sweeps period, which ends Wednesday, May 21.)

ABC's other Thursday show, "Ugly Betty," will also have its season finale on May 22, as planned.

The network initially ordered five episodes of both series when the strike ended. Once the shows were up and running again, a combination of the ABC wanting the extra hours and the producers of the two shows believing they had more stories to tell resulted in the additional episodes.