Were the Zoo season 4 renewal hopes helped, hurt by latest ratings?

Is a Zoo season 4 renewal going to be coming at CBS? We’d love to say so, but it’s far too early to know for sure one way or another. What we know, for now, is that next week’s finale is being billed as a season finale rather than the end of the series. That’s a good sign in that the network isn’t just ending it outright; yet, that is no guarantee that they won’t just come back and cancel the show later without warning.

Last night’s penultimate episode of the show didn’t do a lot to either help or hurt the series, given that it drew a 0.5 rating in the 18-49 demographic that was even with the week prior. We hoped that with the conclusion of The Night Shift that we would see the numbers for the show go up to some degree, but as we’ve seen the past two weeks, that hasn’t happened. The problem now is that you’ve got some competition courtesy of Thursday Night Football, but there is always going to be some sort of competition. You have to just be prepared for that at this point, given that there is never going to be a point where the show is completely free and without other programming elsewhere.

In looking at the current season numbers now as a whole, season 3 is averaging a 0.5 rating in total, which is down around 30% from the second season. This is probably the thing that concerns CBS more than the average for this year. What happens if the show loses another 30% between season 3 and season 4? Then we’re looking at a ratings average of around a 0.3 or a 0.4, and that’s a bad number even for a network like The CW. At a certain point, having DVR ratings and a Netflix streaming deal doesn’t matter all that much. Our current projections here at CarterMatt aren’t super-optimistic, though we enjoy the show and would like for it to continue.

CBS should make their intentions regarding a possible Zoo season 4 renewal clear by the end of the fall, given that they need to be able to announce its future fate in enough time so that you’ll have a chance to get another batch of episodes together. After all, there’s a lot of post-production that needs to be done with Zoo, including adding in all of the episodes. (Unfortunately, including all of these animals/the CGI work in general is probably one of the reasons why the renewal odds are what they are. It’s not the cheapest summer show in the world to make.)

Are you still hoping to see a Zoo season 4 renewal happen at CBS? Be sure to sound off on the subject in the comments!

Meanwhile, click here in the event that you do want to take a look now at the Zoo season 3 finale, and what could be coming up over the course of that dangerous/crazy hour. Let’s hope for big things! (Photo: CBS.)