The Question, Thursday 3/28/13: Will the Idol Lead-in Be Raising Ratings?

Tonight is the first of two straight Thursdays with a post-American Idol sitcom tryout. Arguably the one next week with New Girl and The Mindy Project is more interesting, but we probably won't visit that one since there are even bigger goings-on that night. This time, it's the one-hour finale of already renewed Raising Hope, a show that has historically proven it has a very loyal audience, but it's also not been able to spike much when given a big lead-in. Will the Idol lead-in be Raising ratings? That's The Question for Thursday, March 28, 2013.

Raising Hope In Recent Weeks	Previous Occupant Glee
1.6/1.5 (2/5/2013) 1.5 (2/19/2013) 1.5/1.4 (2/26/2013)	2.4 (3/7/2013, 4.0 Idol lead-in) 2.0 (3/14/2013, 3.4 Idol) 2.0 (3/21/2013, 3.1 Idol)

To elaborate a bit on my "not been able to spike" comment: last season the show aired after The X Factor and did significantly worse than its typical post-New Girl numbers. (Though at the time those shows had about the same ratings.) Later that season it was tried for five weeks at 8:00 and didn't drop too significantly from its post-New Girl level (at least not before DST). Then at the end of the season it returned to 9:30 and rose just a couple ticks from its 8:00 level.

It seems likely the show will go somewhere between its 1.5 norm on Tuesday and Glee's 2.0 norm on Thursday, because I still think Hope is a Truly weaker show than Glee. After seeing the Wednesday carnage, including another huge Idol drop, I'm going right in the middle.

Over/Under: 1.75. (If the finals end up being separated by half-hour, the o/u is 3.55 for the two eps combined.)

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