You can bet that there was wild cheering at ABC offices today when "Lost" was on the list for best drama series when Emmy nominations were announced. The fact that "Lost" didn't nab that nom in 2006 after it won best drama the year before caused an uproar so severe that the Emmys made a dubious, dangerous change in its voting process.

Serialized dramas have a special problem at the Emmy Awards whenever the voting process involves judges who must view video samples. If those judges don't know the back stories of these serialized shows, they can be, literally, lost. So producers of serialized shows usually make a special effort to submit episode samples that have a largely self-contained plot and they've managed to win best series as a result — like "24," "The Sopranos," even "Lost."

But soon after winning, "Lost" producers forgot the magic formula and goofed big time in 2006 when the Emmys launched a new voting process that introduced video judging to the process of determining nominees, which previously were decided solely by an outright popular vote of academy members. A popular vote was still conducted in 2006, but the 10 programs that got the most votes were subjected to one new, additional round of balloting. They had to submit one sample episode to judging panels, which picked the final five nominees.

"Lost" submitted the head-scratching "Man of Science, Man of Faith," which makes no sense to nonviewers of the series, so the show got skunked. TV critics of America rose up in revolt, hurling their usual weapons of mass destruction at the TV academy while denouncing its chiefs as morons. But it wasn't really the chiefs' fault. Had "Lost" producers submitted the Tailies episode, which TV Guide called its best of that season, the show probably would've been nominated again and may even have won.

But no Emmy-watchers pinned the blame where it belonged that year. As usual, they just heaped ridicule unfairly on Emmy chiefs, who were battle-weary and sore from all of the pummeling they always get from TV critics who don't pay attention to the complicated voting process and don't care. Unable to take any more abuse, the chiefs buckled and decided to make the process of participating in the Emmys idiot-proof. They brought in the accountants and cooked up a new mathematical formula that reduced the importance of the judging-panel scores by half, then mixed them on a 50/50 basis with results of the original popular vote. This way they figured that a program as popular as "Lost" could still get nominated even if producers screwed up again with episode submission.

But "Lost" didn't get nominated in 2007 even though it was still hugely popular with TV audiences and TV critics. There was no outcry, though, probably because the same thing had happened the year before — so no big deal. Overall, in fact, there wasn't much kvetching across the industry in response to last year's list of nominees, so ATAS chairman Dick Askin decreed the new, hybrid form of Emmy voting a great success and so perfect that there's no need in the future to tinker any more with the process. As they say in Hollywood, it's a wrap.

Oh, yeah? Askin's wrong. While it's nice to see "Lost" — deservedly — back this year (even though it got snubbed in the writing and directing categories), the whole point of creating these judging panels to determine nominees is compromised. The popular vote was supposed to matter only on the first round, then all semifinalists were supposed to have an equal, fair chance to win. Thus "The Wire," for example, once it made the top 10 this year, should've had its big chance to be nominated for — and win — best drama series. But "The Wire" had relatively low ratings on HBO, so it probably was down near the bottom of the Top 10 vote. To get nominated and compensate for the hybrid 50/50 voting process that hikes the influence of the popular vote, "The Wire" would've needed to . . .

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