Hospital dramas are a dime a dozen, but when done right they can become an iconic piece of TV history, just look at E.R. Although analysts and investors know that’s not always the case — just because you stick a white coat on someone and give their character the ability to perform surgery doesn’t mean it will entice viewers to watch them. Tonight NBC (NYSE: CMSA) is continuing its summer roll-out with The Night Shift, a new medical drama hoping to give its network a pulse during a timeframe where traditionally anything goes.

The background
So how does Shift differ from every other medical drama? To be honest, it many ways it doesn’t. Sure there is originality here, but the series boils down to being about the men and women who work on, as the title suggests, the night shift. Of course each character has their own special backstory, whether it’s the trauma doc who was a war hero in Afghanistan (Melin’s Eoin Macken), his ex-girlfriend turned shift leader (Royal Pains’ Jill Flint) or the hospital administrator whose frugality could cost lives (Six Feet Under’s Freddy Rodriguez). All together it’s nothing you haven’t seen before, except this time it is set in San Antonio and most of the crew has some sort of military connection.

Now with that said, though, the show isn’t trying to hide what it is — and neither is NBC. Shift was first picked up last May and has been held on its bench ever since. It was then lost in a sea of big hits like The Blacklist and a tsunami of even bigger flops like Ironside (and most of NBC’s fall schedule). The only benefit to that was that the network had time to re-configure the series a little and producers in turn had time to flesh out its cast of characters. In fact, it’s the characters that will make or break the series.

The challenge
The success of a show like E.R. wasn’t just because of the pedigree of being from skilled author Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park) and uber-producer John Wells (The West Wing), but that the series’ characters were so multi-faceted and appealing that you wanted to watch.

That’s the vibe Shift is going for, in that each of these actors own their characters and know exactly who they are (for better or worse) and what type of reaction the audience should have to them on a weekly basis. The question is, will it be enough?

The actors assembled in the ensemble are very talented and entertaining to watch with most of them being someone you’ve seen somewhere prior, except now they have more of a featured role. In addition to the three called out above, the show also stars Ken Leung, who fans will recognize as Miles from Lost, as well as Daniella Alonso, who starred alongside Billy Burke in NBC’s one-time promising hit Revolution.

There’s also Party of Five star Scott Foley, who doesn’t actually appear in the pilot and was likely added after the fact to help strengthen the show (which isn’t always a good sign). He’ll play the Dallas based boyfriend of Flint’s character Jordan Alexander.

The alternative
Now the real question that should be posed here by analysts, investors and even advertisers is with the success of Dick Wolf’s Chicago Fire and its Chicago P.D. spinoff, would it have been better for business to just spin-off the spin-off and start Chicago Med?

It’s not like it probably wasn’t considered as one of NBC’s big sweeps events was a Fire/P.D. crossover that revolved around a hospital bombing and it brought in guest-starAmanda Righetti as a pediatrician. Righetti’s fans were also quick to put together that the likeable actress was just leaving her role on the long-running procedural The Mentalist and could soon be very available for a new show. The two-part episode also featured the return of two-time Emmy nominee Dylan Baker (The Good Wife)as a brash but well-meaning surgeon who you could see a series being built around.

The pieces were clearly in place, and having another Chicago series fronted by bankable names like Righetti and Baker seemed like another guaranteed hit, but it was never publically hinted at being a possibility (for now). Realistically NBC probably didn’t want to press its luck (despite P.D.’s success) and realized it had Shift coming up — incidentally in Fire’s usual Tuesday’s at 10 p.m. timeslot — and executives wanted to show faith in the series.

The odds
Realistically, it remains to be seen if audiences will have faith in it as well. Aside from a strong cast, the show will have NBC’s top summer program America’s Got Talent as its lead-in. The reality competition series is coming off its best year yet and can only help boost the odds of success for Shift.

The bar for success is also much lower as its airing during the summer where traditionally numbers are also much lower. So if Talent, which averaged out around 11 million and 12 million viewers last year, repeats that success then Shift will need to hold the lions-share of that as well meaning it would need to earn and hold at least 8 million or 9 million viewers (plus a strong demo performance) to be successful.

That could prove to be a tall order, but it’s one NBC would love to have to keep its momentum going after being crowned the 2013-2014 demo champ for the first time in nine years. Overall this is going to be a big week for NBC with Last Comic Standing looking for a strong second week showing on Thursday, Talent ready to re-enter the ring on Tuesday and event series Crossbones looking to make its mark this Friday.

A lot could go really well or really wrong…we’ll know which direction soon enough.

 

Thank you for reading! Have some feedback for us?
Contact the 24/7 Wall St. editorial team.