The Question, Tuesday 1/8/13: Will Cougar Go To Town on TBS?

Though ABC treated Cougar Town about as well as humanly possible in its first two seasons (airing it after Modern Family), they made up for it in spades in season three, throwing it to Tuesdays with hugely incompatible Last Man Standing. And Cougar Town, never much of a performer in its post-Modern days, was decidedly not up to the challenge on Tuesday. So ABC did away with it, and now Cougar Town finds a whole new kind of situation: cable network TBS. Will Cougar go to town on TBS? That's The Question for Tuesday, January 8, 2013.

Cougar Town Last Season	Recent TBS Premieres
1.8 (premiere, 2/14/12, -47% year-to-year) 1.41 (average, -45%) 1.2 (finale, 5/29/12, -40%)	1.27/1.12 (Men at Work, 5/24/12) 0.98/0.81 (Sullivan & Son, 7/19/12) 0.84 (Wedding Band, Saturday 11/10/12)

We always think about a move to cable meaning a show has to self-start in a worse situation. But that's not how it is on TBS, where they can (and have) put mid-1's The Big Bang Theory repeats before pretty much every original that makes the schedule. And they'll do that again tonight. So its lead-in probably won't be much/any worse than in its last ABC season, and it's almost certainly gotten a lot more promotion on TBS than down the ABC stretch run.

With that being said, I'm not seeing a The Game-style breakout here. We already know that Cougs' audience was limited in a very good situation, and the repeats aren't an integral part of the network's fabric the way they were for The Game on BET. So I see Cougar Town premiering tonight in the general vicinity of last season's average, and later dropping toward 1.0.

Over/Under: 1.35.

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