The Question, Wednesday 11/7/12: Will The Voice Fire Up Chicago's Ratings?

Tonight begins NBC's effort to finish off Fox's sagging The X Factor by airing The Voice against all three of its hours this week. That'll be a matchup to watch, but I'm more interested in seeing what that Voice lead-in does for NBC's new drama Chicago Fire. It's probably not done as poorly as it could have, but it's still been a pretty "meh" performer thus far, dropping a bit from struggling Law and Order: SVU. These one-offs are rarely game-changers, but this will undeniably be an opportunity for a lot of new exposure for this show. Will The Voice fire up Chicago's ratings? That's The Question for Wednesday, November 7, 2012.

The Voice notes	Chicago Fire This Season
averaged a 5.15 at 9:30 for its first six Monday airings, including a 5.1 on 10/29 5.0 at 9:30 on Tuesday 10/30/12 averaged a 3.4 (one hour) in its only previous airing vs. The X Factor on 9/12/12 (15% below the Tuesday result that week)	1.9 (10/10/2012) (1.9 SVU lead-in) 1.5 (10/17/2012) (1.7) 1.8 (10/24/2012) (2.0) 1.6 (10/31/2012) (1.8)

Two questions here: 1) How big will The Voice be? A special night and facing The X Factor aren't good things, though I do think this show is stronger relative to X than it was when they dueled at the beginning of the season. I say The Voice averages a low to mid-4's at 9:30 (and a 4.0 overall from 8:00 to 10:00).

And 2) How much will it affect Chicago Fire? The True2 calculation says that a one-hour show goes up by 0.1 for every 0.6 increase in lead-in, which would suggest (if my Voice pick is right) that Chicago will go up by about 0.4 to 0.5, maybe a tick more if Chicago was deflated by Halloween last week. Chicago might drop some viewers who were only watching because of the pairing with SVU, but then people may be more open to sampling a newer show than that largely veteran-derived 0.1-to-0.6 ratio would suggest.

Over/Under: 2.15.

No entries accepted after 6:00am ET the morning after the date in the headline. If editing your pick, please leave a separate comment.