Ratings: ‘MasterChef’ steady; ‘American Ninja Warrior,’ ‘Wayward Pines,’ ‘The Night Shift’ fall

Oh, the woes of being a summer show. Unless you really qualify as being must-see TV, it is incredibly hard to convince people to check out your show. We’ve seen it time and time again, and the latest bit of evidence on this very thing comes via the ratings for Wednesday night’s primetime lineup.

When it comes to new shows, only one managed to keep its entire 18-49 demo audience from the week before: “MasterChef” with a 1.2. While this isn’t a smash-hit sort of rating, it is probably enough to continue to make Fox executives happy. The thing with “MasterChef” is that it’s perfect summer TV: It’s breezy, fun, inspirational at times, and ultimately easy to digest. If you miss an episode, it’s not the end of the world since the show is fairly formulaic.

Now, the bad news – Let’s start here with “Wayward Pines,” which hit a series low this week courtesy of a 0.7 rating. This is where Fox miscalculated in a pretty big way in bringing the show back. They clearly thought that there would still be an appetite for this event series, but we feel like part of the appeal last year was that there was supposed to be a defined beginning, middle, and end. That appeal is gone, season 1 characters continue to be killed off, and the show’s just not as strong.

Meanwhile, “The Night Shift” dropped down to a 0.9 in its second week, and while “American Ninja Warrior” dropped to a 1.6 in its second week, that is easily enough for it still to win the night.

Ultimately, you can blame most of what happened here on the NBA Finals, which is a little bit of a ratings vacuum whenever there are games played.

You can read our most-recent “MasterChef” review over at this link! Also, sign up over here to get some other TV news on all we cover, sent right over to you via our official CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: Fox.)