The True Top 25, Week Ending 2/10/13 (2012-13 Week 20)

In a bit of a shocker, the season's most impressive The Big Bang Theory and its 6.2 demo topped the Grammy Awards and its 10.1 on the True Top 25. BBT had much more competition in a timeslot where there are over five percentage points fewer 18-49ers using TV, and that was enough to make the difference. Does this mean that a three-hour The Big Bang Theory original would do better than a 10.1 in the Grammys' timeslot? Well, it's supposed to, but I wouldn't go that far.

(To get a little inside baseball: if I applied the same competition add-on as for sports events, the Grammys would have an 8.55. This is supposed to account for the fact that huge sports events drastically drive up overall viewing but don't get credit for the broadcast viewing, creating a much less competitive situation than it actually is. It didn't appear that specials, even the huge ones, had as much of an effect on overall viewing as big sports events, but it's perhaps worth reconsidering that.)

In a basically full-strength week, the two things I usually keep an eye on (Friday/Saturday and new shows) were almost totally unrepresented. The Following was the lone new show (though Chicago Fire (27th) and Elementary (28th) were very close), and nobody on Friday made it with Shark Tank having a bit of an off week. (It came in 31st.)

Rank	Name	True2	A18-49	ARank
1	The Big Bang Theory	6.65	6.2	2
2	Grammy Awards	6.49	10.1	1
3	American Idol Wed	4.65	4.6	3
4	American Idol Thu	4.39	4.1	4
5	Modern Family	4.11	3.7	7
6	How I Met Your Mother	3.69	4.0	6
7	NCIS	3.61	3.7	7
8	2 Broke Girls	3.37	3.7	7
9	Grey's Anatomy	3.34	3.1	11
10	Two and a Half Men	3.20	4.1	4
11	Criminal Minds	3.17	2.8	16
12	Person of Interest	2.86	3.1	11
13	Mike and Molly	2.84	3.2	10
14	The Following	2.82	2.9	15
15	Scandal	2.73	2.8	16
16	NCIS: Los Angeles	2.69	3.1	11
17	The Bachelor (Tue)	2.68	2.7	18
18	New Girl	2.59	2.6	19
19	CSI	2.47	2.4	21
20	Rules of Engagement	2.44	3.1	11
21	The Office	2.40	2.1	29
22	The Bachelor (Mon)	2.37	2.4	21
23	The Middle	2.36	2.3	24
24	Family Guy	2.32	2.5	20
25	Bones	2.31	2.4	21

Missing the True Top 25 but in the A18-49 list: Hawaii Five-0 (t-#24 in A18-49, #32 in True2).

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

I created the True Strength number 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!