How NFL football hurt The Night Shift season 4, SNL Weekend Update Summer Edition

Where do we even start in professing our hatred for preseason football? We just don’t get it. We understand that regular-season NFL games are big sells for networks given that it’s a uniting force among many local communities and a source of pride. We’re not going to tell anyone to be anti-sports by any means. Yet, at the same time this is PRESEASON. The games don’t matter! Yet, for whatever reason millions of viewers tune in to watch some scrubs play for half a game while the starters give you a quarter or two of play at best.

The biggest reason to be bitter about this comes via the TV ratings for some of your favorites. You see the preliminary ratings and get excited, thinking that some of your favorite shows are gaining week-to-week. Then, you remember that they’re not on the air in some markets thanks to football, and because of that the numbers are likely to adjust down to lower-than-average numbers because of only part of the country seeing the show.

This is the way of things for The Night Shift, which dropped to a season-low 0.5 rating in the 18-49 demographic thanks to NFL football ravaging many NBC affiliates on the night. This is a tremendous bummer given that the special episode honoring veterans last night was one of the show’s best, and there are many NFL viewers out there in particular who probably would have enjoyed it if they had an opportunity to see it. We don’t think the sample size is going to impact the show’s renewal / cancellation odds in the end, but the drop still makes us sad.

This wasn’t the only NBC scripted show to suffer big — Saturday Night Live: Weekend Update Summer Edition fell from a 1.7 rating in the preliminary ratings to a 1.2 once the NFL ratings were taken out. This is still a respectable performance all things considered, but remember some of the killer numbers that the series was generating for much of its actual season. At least it can monetize itself fairly easily with all of the different videos on YouTube.

Other drops

Over on CBS, Big Brother did drop in the final ratings to a 1.9, still a very good outing for the show that makes it #1 on the night. This is one of the interesting things about where the show is at right now — even though we’re in the midst of a pretty boring week on the show, the ratings are not falling as a result of it.

Meanwhile, Zoo actually improved to a 0.6 rating, its best figure in the past couple of weeks. Our sentiment is that CBS didn’t have as many preemptions as NBC did, meaning that their programming was not hit anywhere near as hard.

Does preseason football tick you off as much as it does us?

Share in the comments below! Meanwhile, if you head over to the link here you can see our full review for this episode of The Night Shift. (Photo: NBC.)