The Question, Thursday 9/13/12: Glee-falling?

For the next few weeks (at least), I'm gonna try to enhance the nightly ratings review by having a nightly ratings preview to bounce off of. Enter The Question, a quick and easy daily look at the upcoming evening's most significant number. I'll list some numbers I find pertinent, I'll write a paragraph (maybe two) about the situation, and I'll make a prediction. I encourage you to comment with whether you think the number will be Over or Under my prediction. I might make some kind of game out of the over/under portion if I ever get to a point where several people are participating.

Here's The Question for Thursday, September 13, 2012. Season three of Glee saw the one-time phenomenon begin what feels like a pretty rapid flame-out. Whether the end actually comes this season may depend in part on how Fox's other dramas do, but we're skipping ahead a few steps. For now, the question is how far Glee declines on premiere night. Will the X Factor lead-in stabilize this show, or will it continue Glee-falling?

Glee premieres	Glee finales
3.5 (9/9/09) 5.6 (9/21/10) 4.0 (9/20/11)	4.7 (6/8/10) 4.6 (5/24/11) 2.9 (5/22/12)

I've gone on record saying I think this is gonna be a pretty rough season for Glee. With that being said, I also feel those low-2 levels I predicted won't really show up in full force until Grey's Anatomy and then all the election/baseball preemptions set in. Heck, even Fringe hit a 3.0 in this slot against pre-premiere competition three years ago! (Then it promptly dropped to 2.3 the next week when everyone else showed up.) The X Factor lead-in will be smaller than I expected, and there's kind of a lot of competition: Got Talent finale, Thursday Night Football, Big Brother. But some of those shows won't have much impact on Glee. Last season's premiere fell well behind the prior finale, but I think the Thursday move puts Glee in a slightly better situation at least for this one week.

Over/Under: 2.8.