Oh, lord. This won't be pretty...

Favorites, in order:
Lost
The Outer Limits
Big Love
Dexter
Friday the 13th

I fear you're correct in that assessment. The main character is shifted to an FBI agent in the show (in the novel it was a researcher at CERN), the flash forward event in the show is 6 months in the future (in the book it's 21 years), in the book no recording media worked for the duration of the flash forward event while in the show it does, and in the show it looks like they're setting it up to be caused by some sinister organization (in the book it was an accident of coincidence while firing up the particle accelerator in search of the Higgs boson). Those are just the most glaring things that I noticed.
As I said, I realize changes need to be made in order to serialize it, and I'm going to give it a couple more episodes, but I fear the worst just from the little bit I've seen. Oh well.

Not having known there was a book this was based on, I thought it wasn't too bad a show...
Mind you, I said that about Star Trek: Voyager once upon a time :P
Well, it's not like we have a great deal of anything worth watching on TV here, so I'll probably give FF until at least Stargate:Universe is aired to pick up a decent story. Not holding my breath that SGU will be good either, TBH.

I'm all about Glee.

I just watched the first episode of Flash Forward tonight, and it looks to be MORE than capable of being a sucessor to Lost.
Except for their penchance for prematurely killing off characters, SPOILER ALERT!!!!!
.....like Mr. Echo being dragged through the mud, literally and figuratively, all because the actor had a contract disputer, ABC are good at letting shows run their course.
Unlike Fox, which ironically killed off the super critically acclaimed Firefly after ONE season, Arrested Dev. after 2 1/2, and yet 24 is going into it's EIGHTH.

I don't get your criticism of Fox. Firefly and Arrested were critically acclaimed yes, but so is 24, and 24 gets more audience, the main goal is audience. You fault them for trying to make money? The argument you should have used to criticize Fox is their moving those shows around, Firefly got dumped on Fridays, and it every other week it was just moved around without any warning or commercials, along with the live action Tick show.

24 is still and awesome show. It's one of the few that are still good after one or two seasons, without a hint of "milking the story" kind of mentality. Also, Fox is extended their show durations (like Fringe), calling it some new way of shortening ads and extended episode lengths and making you less likely to change the channel. I call it bullshit and my DVR didn't record the end of Fringe.

Hahaha, that sucks for you. And I do agree, 24 is a really fun show.

Good that they know that people are criticizing 24 for being more or less Jack Bauer torturing people in CTU, and they changed the story and the way the show worked a bit (but not enough to cause TV Guide to scream bloody murder) in the last season. But I miss Firefly. But I have the whole boxset of that, and it seems to be different every time you're on new kinds of medication.

I guess if I was a George Bush-loving American that thought the Iraq war was a great idea, or I wore one of those detestable "Support the Troops" shirts, I would love 24.

I love 24 because there hasn't been a decent kill lots of people as a government agency member show in ages. There are movies, yes, but not TV shows. The 24 hours time thing is a bit of a gimmick, but I watch it for explosions and car bombs and gunfire.
I do not like Bush, conservatives, nor am I American.

Or maybe you'd just like 24 if you enjoyed fun television. A show's agenda doesn't always have to affect its quality. And I am not a Bush-loving American, and I think the only good thing to come out of the Iraq war was The Hurt Locker.
If you have a show where the main character croaks then that guy would not be the main character, so basically what you are saying is that you want a show with no main characters. But then who would I root for? If each week a new person was introduced, I would probably not give a rat's ass about him.

You WOULD care about the main characters, because it would be well-written.
See Rome, or Lost for examples of ensemble casts where almost nobdy is safe.