‘The Night Shift’ season 4: Renewal odds for NBC series

Tonight on NBC, the third season of “The Night Shift” is coming to an end with an episode that is hopefully going to have its fair share of satisfying moments … though we also expect plenty of cliffhangers for various characters as well. We’re in the midst of wall-to-wall finale coverage. We just spoke earlier this week to Brendan Fehr (Drew), and we have something else cool planned for later in the week to help everyone dissect what went down.

So for the sake of this article, we want to talk a bit about ratings in the context of the show’s future, whatever it may be. It is a surprise that the network has not issued a season 4 order to date, especially when you consider a pair of factors.

1. Ratings – As of right now, the series is averaging a 1.0 rating in the 18-49 demographic, which is down versus season 2 but still very solid for summer. (Remember, season 2 aired during the spring, a more lucrative time for ratings.) What is especially impressive is that the series is down only 6% in total viewers in live+same day viewing, far better than the typical year-to-year decreases we’re seeing for scripted shows these days.

2. Competition – The show managed to do this even when you consider such things as shifting timeslots, double-episodes, and various hiatuses over the course of the summer. There was competition on TV, but we also think there is outside competition in the discourse department. People have been transfixed on so many other things as of late, whether it be cable / streaming options or even the election, that broadcast shows have felt the impact. These serve as distractions, and TV may not be top priority for everyone.

We do believe the odds are very good that a fourth season is coming, and it could just be a matter of working everything out. One factor could be that this series hails from Sony Pictures TV rather than an in-house studio, which means that there are often more moving parts that go into the renewal process.

Once there is some news to pass along, we’ll absolutely have it for you on the site.

We’ll have a full review for the finale up later tonight. Update: Check out our review here! Also, be sure to head over here to score some other TV news on everything we cover, sent right over to you via our official CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: NBC.)