The True Top 25, Week Ending 3/11/12 (2011-12 Week 25)

The Big Bang Theory was back in action and back on top of the True Top 25, edging both The Voice (the raw A18-49 winner) and American Idol. Thanks to March Madness, this was its last Thursday episode for a few weeks, original or repeat. (The "or repeat" thing is key because the repeat was easily the second-biggest scripted show of the week.) No other scripted show cracked a 3.00, but a couple promising freshman performances (New Girl and Person of Interest) were closest.

In a slow week, also the lowest overall-viewed week of 2012 to date, we at least got to see some shows that usually won't make the cut. Smash, CSI: Miami and the last pre-hiatus Parks and Recreation all got relatively rare nods.

Rank	Name	TRUE	A18-49	ARank
1	The Big Bang Theory	6.66	5.1	3
2	The Voice	6.45	6.2	1
3	American Idol Wed	6.31	5.7	2
4	American Idol Thu	6.05	4.9	4
5	The Big Bang Theory (R)	3.88	3.9	5
6	Survivor	3.85	3.2	7
7	New Girl	2.96	3.0	8
8	Person of Interest	2.90	3.4	6
9	The Mentalist	2.88	2.8	11
10	Once Upon a Time	2.76	2.9	9
11	The Amazing Race	2.66	2.9	9
12	The Bachelor	2.52	2.5	16
13	Modern Family (R)	2.45	2.4	17
14	Family Guy	2.43	2.8	11
15	The Office	2.40	2.6	14
16	The Simpsons	2.24	2.3	19
17	NCIS (R)	2.22	2.4	17
18	Undercover Boss	2.22	2.0	27
19	Smash	2.22	2.7	13
20	How I Met Your Mother (R)	2.20	2.0	27
21	GCB	2.13	2.3	19
22	2 Broke Girls (R)	2.10	2.1	23
23	CSI: Miami	2.08	2.1	23
24	Parks and Recreation	2.01	1.8	35
25	Alcatraz	1.99	1.9	32

Missing the True Top 25 but in the A18-49 list: Two and a Half Men (R) (t-#23 in A18-49, #26 in TRUE), Raising Hope (t-#23 in A18-49, #27 in TRUE), Desperate Housewives (t-#14 in A18-49, #31 in TRUE), American Dad! (#22 in A18-49, #49 in TRUE) and The Finder (t-#19 in A18-49, #50 in TRUE).

For more on the True Top 25, click to expand.

I created the True Strength number last summer so I could have an objective way of comparing shows across vastly different situations. One of the most fun comparisons to be made is among the biggest shows on TV. What's really the strongest show in a vacuum? Hence my new weekly feature the True Top 25. This will compare shows while accounting for everything so we can see who Truly comes out on top. I include both the A18-49 and the weekly ranking in A18-49 so you can see the changes within the rankings that True Strength makes.

The A18-49 rankings aren't based on Nielsen's "official" broadcast top 25. They're derived from my own spreadsheet just using the big-five networks, so none of the big players on Univision are included. I've also weeded out some weird programming like NFL overruns and sports pre-game shows. Most of that stuff airs largely out of primetime or is strangely split apart, so I don't want to muddle the list with that.

As mentioned on the sports SpotVault pages, True Strengths for sporting events are based on the primetime portion only. Perhaps in future editions I'll try to get the primetime portion only A18-49 into the A18-49 rankings so it'll be a totally fair comparison. 

Here's last week's True Top 25!