Did The Night Shift season 4 finale ratings boost season 5 odds?

We’ve been waiting to get the official The Night Shift season 4 finale ratings for most of the day, and the wait’s been at times certainly frustrating. What’s the reason for that? Well, it’s simple: The NFL. For some reason, there are still people who line up in droves to watch meaningless preseason games, which don’t really produce any result other than players getting hurt and missing time during the season.

We could go on for a while about how football should just rid of these for both fans of the game and the players themselves, let alone some of us that have to deal with stupid preemptions; alas, that’s not the focus of this article. Let’s just get to some of those Night Shift season 4 finale ratings so we can look towards what will sort of decision NBC could make later this fall.

Unfortunately, the series did slide down to a 0.6 rating in the 18-49 demographic after this past episode, which is a drop from where it was the week prior. The good news is that it did win the 10:00 p.m. Eastern timeslot, and was the second-most-watched original program on the night behind only the Big Brother live eviction show. Here’s one other note via the network: The Night Shift will “increase substantially via time-shifting and VOD – so far this summer, [the show] is growing by +50% in 18-49 rating going from L+SD to L+7 (from a 0.68 to a 1.02) and +1.7 million viewers overall (4.0 million to 5.7 million).” Take that as a positive sign that more viewers are going to check out the show after the fact.

The crummy thing about the show’s ratings situation this year is that if you look before the NFL preemptions started, The Night Shift was rising almost every week. Unfortunately, the presence of some of these preemptions did stunt its momentum. If it does get canceled, we just hope that it’s not because of some of the hurdles that were thrown in its way the past month or so. One way or another, we do love the show and we’re going to miss it, even if we’re just missing it for a short hiatus.

If you missed our full ratings-debate piece on the show Thursday, NBC likely has a couple of months in order to decide if they want to order a fifth season — they didn’t renew The Night Shift for a season 4 until we rolled around to November. That leaves the network plenty of opportunities to figure out what they want to do. (Just a reminder for them: If you put this show behind a good lead-in, it will deliver. Unfortunately, the finale either didn’t air at all last night in some markets or aired behind a repeat of The Wall on NBC.)

What do you think about the latest Night Shift season 4 finale ratings? Be sure to share in the comments below!

Meanwhile, head over to the link here in the event that you do want to get some more news when it comes to the show, including our FULL REVIEW for the finale episode. (Photo: NBC.)