• by Wayne Friedman , November 22, 2013

Another less-than-spectacular Fox fall season for its non-sports prime-time programming has forced the network to shake things up for midseason.

“Glee” will move to Tuesday at 8 p.m. in late February from Thursday night. Second-year comedy “The Mindy Project,” struggling with low ratings issues, will get a two-month break starting on Jan. 28 when it has a “winter finale.” It will start up again on April 1 with a special one-hour premiere.

New comedy “Dads,” also with low viewership, will continue to lead off Tuesday at 8 p.m. until February 11. Fox didn’t reveal its plans for the show after that.

“Brooklyn Nine Nine” will move to 9:30 p.m on Tuesdays from 8:30 p.m., and get a season finale on Tuesday, March 25. The week afterward, “Mindy Project” will return in that time slot. “New Girl” will continue in the Tuesday 9 p.m. time slot.

Coming back to Fox is drama “The Following,” the big midseason surprise in terms of viewership of a year ago. It will have a two-night second-season premiere, starting on Sunday, Jan. 19 (after the NFC Championship game), and then on Monday, Jan. 20, both nights running at 9 p.m.

Leading into “The Following” on Jan. 20 at 8 p.m. will be the season finale of “Sleepy Hollow.” The week after “Almost Human” will return to its Monday 8 p.m. time slot.

“American Idol” will return on Wednesday, Jan. 15, 8 p.m. to 10 p.m., and the next night, Thursday, Jan. 16 for a special two-hour episode. The next Thursday, it will settle into its usual one-hour 8 p.m. time slot followed by new show “Rake” at 9 p.m. featuring Greg Kinnear, playing a criminal defense attorney.

In October, Fox grew 10.9% in prime time to 3 million 18-49 viewers in Nielsen’s key C3 rating -- mostly because of the World Series. But taking sports out of the picture, Fox was down the most of any network -- 9.1% -- getting to a fourth-place broadcast network average of 2.4 million 18-49 viewers.

A year before, Fox was down by double-digit percentages among 18-49 viewers in the fourth quarter .