The True Top 25, Week Ending 3/18/12 (2011-12 Week 26)

The True Top 25 leadership changed once again this week as American Idol took the top two slots by a decent margin. Modern Family was back in originals and, despite hitting a season low in raw numbers, hit its best TRUE in several episodes and nearly doubled all other scripted shows. And NCAA basketball had a presence with all three primetime CBS games on Friday and Saturday. The Thursday games ranked #32 and #44 on the TRUE list. (Haven't had this matter in awhile, so lemme just reiterate that the TRUE scores are for primetime-portion only, which means sometimes the TRUEs are being calculated relative to a higher 18-49 number than the one that appears for sports events.)

This is the first full week post-Daylight Saving Time, which is evident in some of the huge scores for 8:00 shows below. I think we tend to forget about DST when the affected show didn't air the immediate week before (or at least I do), but it's also got to be counted for premieres and returns from hiatus. So Community looks rather spectacular in its return to the schedule, and ABC's Missing wasn't so bad itself. Yes, Community didn't face The Big Bang Theory and may well drop big even next week without Bang as the hype dies down, but it also rated 0.4 higher than any previous result in its lowest overall-viewed timeslot of the season. It is a moment worth celebrating.

Rank	Name	TRUE	A18-49	ARank
1	American Idol Wed	6.99	5.4	1
2	American Idol Thu	6.32	4.6	3
3	Modern Family	5.81	4.5	4
4	The Voice	5.48	5.2	2
5	Survivor	4.16	3.0	6
6	NCAA Basketball (Sat-Iowa St/Kentucky)	3.23	2.5	16
7	The Middle	3.15	2.1	25
8	The Bachelor: After the Final Rose	3.04	3.3	5
9	Community	3.00	2.2	21
10	The Bachelor	2.95	2.9	8
11	Criminal Minds	2.94	2.8	10
12	Grey's Anatomy	2.90	3.0	6
13	New Girl	2.90	2.8	10
14	Once Upon a Time	2.75	2.9	8
15	NCAA Basketball (Fri-Lehigh/Duke)	2.69	2.0	34
16	Missing	2.66	2.1	25
17	CSI	2.65	2.8	10
18	The Office	2.39	2.4	17
19	Shark Tank	2.35	1.7	45
20	The Simpsons	2.35	2.4	17
21	Suburgatory	2.34	2.1	25
22	30 Rock	2.32	2.0	34
23	NCIS (R)	2.28	2.1	25
24	NCAA Basketball (Fri-Xavier/Notre Dame)	2.25	1.8	41
25	2 Broke Girls (R)	2.20	2.1	25

Missing the True Top 25 but in the A18-49 list: Family Guy (t-#10 in A18-49, #26 in TRUE), The Biggest Loser Spring (t-#25 in A18-49, #28 in TRUE), Private Practice (t-#25 in A18-49, #27 in TRUE), The Amazing Race (#14 in A18-49, #30 in TRUE), Happy Endings (t-#17 in A18-49, #34 in TRUE), 60 Minutes (t-#21 in A18-49, #37 in TRUE), Smash (t-#17 in A18-49, #40 in TRUE), Desperate Housewives (#15 in A18-49, #41 in TRUE), Bob's Burgers (t-#25 in A18-49, #42 in TRUE), Touch (R) (t-#21 in A18-49, #54 in TRUE) and American Dad! (t-#21 in A18-49, #57 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!