Will The Last Ship season 4 suffer due to Game of Thrones competition?

The Last Ship is a series that creatively takes quite a few risks. In terms of TNT itself, we’re also seeing a rather big risk being taken by them in terms of their programming.

The Eric Dane drama is premiering tomorrow night at 9:00 p.m. Eastern time, and were this any other year, that timeslot would probably make a little more sense. However, this also happens to be the same timeslot occupied by Game of Thrones. For the next two weeks, you are going to effectively see these two shows go head to head. That’s tough for The Last Ship, given that Game of Thrones is already five episodes into its run and is setting ratings records left and right. The next two episodes of the HBO series are also both running far over an hour in length, which is going to make things all the more challenging for those wanting to catch The Last Ship immediately on their DVR before bed.

Oh, and there’s one other issue that you also have to think about here: NFL football. Before long, Sunday Night Football will be back on NBC and The Last Ship will have to contend against that. When you consider that this is a show that is high-octane, action-packed, and about honoring the military, you do have to think that many of these people also enjoy watching the NFL.

Basically, there is more competition for The Last Ship than ever before, and you have to hope that the ratings withstand it. It seems like the premiere of Claws in part pushed back the show, and while TNT seems to have won out with that decision (Claws was a big hit for them), let’s just hope that The Last Ship isn’t hurt in the process. If we were to get into expectations for a moment here, season 3 averaged a 0.5 rating and just over 2.2 million viewers. Even if season 4 averaged a 0.4 rating and around 1.8 million viewers, we don’t think that TNT would be all that upset about that, either. These are still very good numbers for cable! The show does have a silver lining in that this has a season 5 renewal already, but we’ll be the first to admit that we are very much the impatient viewer. We want to see the show to have as long of a television life as possible.

Rest assured that we will take a closer look at The Last Ship season 4 and its ratings as we get more into the fall, especially in terms of competition since it also has NCIS: Los Angeles waiting in the wings.

Do you think all of this competition is set up to hurt The Last Ship in some significant way? Be sure to share your thoughts in the comments!

Also, be sure to head over to this link to get some other news when it comes to the series. (Photo: TNT.)