The Question, Tuesday 9/11/12: Another Ratings #Goon?

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 Tuesday, September 11, 2012. NBC is investing heavily in the situation comedy this season. There are five comedy hours on the fall sked including four comedy newbies, plus several more in reserve. And they seem to think the best of the bunch is Go On, led by former Friend Matthew Perry. Can this show get NBC back in the scripted game, or is it yet another ratings #goon?

Go On post-Olympics preview	Go On pilot encores
5.6 (8/8/12, 10.4 Olympics lead-in)	1.4 (8/21/12, 2.8 9:30 Got Talent lead-in) 1.8 (9/10/12, 2.5 The New Normal lead-in)
Mr. Sunshine premiere	NBC comedy premieres w/good lead-ins
3.7 (2/9/11, with 5.1 Modern Family lead-in)	3.8 (Community, 9/19/09, The Office 4.1) 3.6 (Outsourced, 9/29/10, The Office 4.4) 3.7 (Up All Night, 9/14/11, Got Talent 4.3)  3.3 (Whitney, 9/22/11, The Office 4.0) 2.5 (The New Normal, 9/10/12, Voice 4.7)

Though NBC struggles to get stuff sampled with nothing lead-ins, quite a few of their recent comedies have done pretty well with good lead-ins on premiere night. (Of course, none of those above shows really held up all that well post-premiere, but we'll worry about that in future editions.) This airing is kind of a blend of premiere and second episode, since the pilot first aired on TV over a month ago, but it'll have at minimum a good The Voice lead-in (maybe a 4.0ish in the 8:30 half-hour) and relatively little competition. Last night's 1.8 seems to me like a pretty decent number for a third-run episode with a lead-in that's much smaller than it'll have tonight.

I do believe the appeal of Perry himself contributed to both the Mr. Sunshine premiere ratings (considerably better than other post-Modern premieres like Happy Endings and Apartment 23) and quite possibly even to the Go On preview ratings (when compared to a weaker showing from Animal Practice). But that only goes so far; for example, Fox premiered pretty decently with Kelsey Grammer's return to TV in Back to You, but there was a lot less interest in his second stab with Hank.

I'm setting this Over/Under at 3.3.