The Night Shift season 4 premiere ratings down; Gong Show starts okay

The first The Night Shift season 4 premiere ratings are in, and we certainly wish there was happier news to report on that subject.

Last night’s episode, which is the first in this new timeslot, ended up posting a series-low rating of just a 0.6 in the 18-49 demographic. The lowest rating the show posted all of last season was a 0.8, when it had the benefit of a far stronger lead-in. Hopefully, the premiere ratings are just a symptom of some viewers not knowing that the show was back and they’ll discover it over time; there are probably a number of viewers who also caught it via their DVR, but those numbers are not available just yet.

In general, though, it’s hard to say that lower summer ratings are a problem experienced only by The Night Shift, given that this is emblematic of a lot of scripted programming this year. There’s a reason why networks like ABC are programming heavily with scripted game shows rather than anything beyond that. It saves them money knowing that the audiences are there are smaller. (Oh, and of course you can throw a little bit of blame out there on streaming providers for making people even less interested in sitting through commercials.)

We are still concerned for next week, especially with the premiere of Zoo on CBS coming on the horizon.

As for other important ratings notes from last night…

The Gong Show starts solid – Yes, a 0.9 rating in the demo is solid, especially for a low-budget game show that’s giving its winners barely over $2000 for taking part. To put this into some context, one of the leads from The Big Bang Theory makes more money per five seconds of an episode than the winner of an episode of this show, and by a pretty decent margin at that.

Also on ABC, the premiere of Boy Band drew a 0.7, not that we expected it to fare all that well since the singing-show genre is so tired and few attempts from ABC to replicate American Idol have worked. That’s probably one of the reasons why they bought it.

More game show numbers – Beat Shazam actually topped the night with a 1.0, whereas Hollywood Game Night and The Wall drew a 0.8 and a 0.9, respectively. Once again, all of these shows are fairly cheap to make beyond paying the hosts.

If you missed it, we now suggest that you head over to the link here in the event you want to read our full review now of the Night Shift premiere! (Photo: NBC.)