The True Top 25, Week Ending 3/10/13 (2012-13 Week 24)

The Big Bang Theory is back into originals for a couple weeks, and it was back on top of the True Top 25 in week 24. Fox aired 5.5 hours of American Idol, and those three telecasts took the next three spots.

With quite a few of the usual weeknight heavy hitters out of the mix, there were several unusual entries this week. Namely, four Friday shows sniffed the list, from usual suspect Shark Tank (which actually cracked the raw numbers top 25) to a higher-end 20/20, the return of Grimm and a Blue Bloods episode that stayed steady despite its worst lead-in since the Made in Jersey days. And a fifth Friday program, Last Man Standing, finished in 26th for the second straight week. 

The Following was the only new show this week with usual contenders Elementary and Chicago Fire still in repeats, but once again The Neighbors (27th) was close.

Rank	Name	True2	A18-49	ARank
1	The Big Bang Theory	5.49	5.5	1
2	American Idol Thu	3.74	3.6	4
3	American Idol Wed	3.52	3.8	3
4	American Idol Tue	3.44	3.5	5
5	NCIS	3.42	3.4	6
6	Two and a Half Men	3.12	3.9	2
7	The Following	2.70	2.8	7
8	The Bachelor	2.65	2.8	7
9	Person of Interest	2.54	2.8	7
10	Survivor	2.53	2.6	12
11	NCIS: Los Angeles	2.48	2.8	7
12	Shark Tank	2.39	2.0	21
13	Family Guy	2.34	2.7	11
14	The Amazing Race	2.30	2.4	13
15	Once Upon a Time	2.25	2.3	15
16	Glee	2.14	2.4	13
17	The Simpsons	2.13	2.2	16
18	Rules of Engagement	2.12	2.2	16
19	The Biggest Loser	2.12	2.2	16
20	Modern Family (R)	2.07	2.1	20
21	Bones	2.04	2.2	16
22	Mike and Molly (R)	1.96	1.8	23
23	20/20	1.96	1.6	32
24	Grimm	1.93	1.5	39
25	Blue Bloods	1.89	1.4	44

Missing the True Top 25 but in the A18-49 list: Celebrity Apprentice (t-#23 in A18-49, #28 in True2), Revenge (t-#21 in A18-49, #31 in True2), The Cleveland Show (t-#23 in A18-49, #33 in True2) and Bob's Burgers (t-#23 in A18-49, #47 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!