Zoo season 3 premiere ratings low; The Night Shift rises; Gong Show solid
The action-adventure drama, routinely one of the most entertaining entries of the summer, got off to a pretty woeful start with just a 0.5 rating in the 18-49 demographic. When you consider that it aired after the #1 show of the night in Big Brother 19 (1.6), this makes that rating look all the weaker. It’s down more than 35% in the demo from where the show was at the start of season 2.
For now, let’s hope that this rating is just emblematic of the majority of viewers not realizing that the show was on the air yet, and that there is no larger problem going on here that will cause it to fall even further as the season progresses. There is still some hope, as we’re about to get to in the next piece.
The Night Shift on the rise – The latest episode of the medical drama showed some great improvement over its most-recent episode, going up to a 0.7 rating. This gives us a little more hope that this is a show that could stick around for a fifth season, or at least have a hope of it. (We’re probably getting a little far ahead of ourselves here, but this is what we do in these pieces!) At least we’ve got something positive to say now.
How about The Gong Show? – Who expected this bit of silliness to be just as popular this week as the one before? While a 0.9 rating doesn’t exactly quality for an instant hit, it was the #1 show in its timeslot for ABC and it kept virtually all of its audience from the premiere. Given that the majority of the show seems dirt-cheap beyond paying host “Tommy Maitland,” we figure that it’s an instant renewal if it stays close to that in the coming weeks. (Given that CarterMatt’s own Jason Prager is going to be on next week’s episode, you know that we’re going to be watching it!)
Overall, this was one of the healthier nights of summer TV we’ve seen in the past month; in looking at the numbers for most everything other than Zoo, it does give us hope that there can still be fun programming on in these months and not everyone is just flocking over to Netflix.
What did you watch on TV Thursday night? Share your take on that and the ratings below!
Also, be sure to visit the link here to get some additional news regarding last night’s Zoo premiere, including a review of everything that happened. (Photo: CBS.)