The Question, Tuesday 9/23/14: Will NCIS: New Orleans Ratings Geaux High?

Tonight, CBS has its third drama premiere in three nights. The Sunday and Monday efforts may have been somewhat experimental scheduling-wise, but NCIS: New Orleans is a good old-fashioned spin-off placed right after its mother program. It seems like a decent bet for success, but it will face more drama competition (from Agents of SHIELD) than NCIS: Los Angeles used to in this slot, and it's leading out of an NCIS mothership that just took its biggest seasonal drop in series history. Will NCIS: New Orleans ratings geaux high? That's The Question for Tuesday, September 23, 2014.

NCIS and NCIS: LA Last Season

3.6/2.81/2.6 (NCIS premiere/avg/finale) 3.0/2.43/2.5 (NCIS: Los Angeles premiere/avg/finale) 4.4 (NCIS: LA series premiere, 9/22/09 (4.8 NCIS lead-in))

This show should, like LA, keep 90-100% of the mothership viewers for the series premiere. So though this is an NCIS: New Orleans Question, it may be more about how well NCIS comes back. Spin-off hype may bring some viewers back into the mothership tent, and the competition should be noticeably reduced from 2013 with no massive Agents of SHIELD launch and The Voice slumping a bit. (In fact, the mothership faces nothing scripted at 8/7c.) But it could take a noticeable step below last year's premiere anyway, as last season began with the heavily-hyped departure of Cote De Pablo.

NCIS: New Orleans Over/Under: 2.95.

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