The True Top 25, Week Ending 10/27/13 (2013-14 Week Five)

The World Series crashed the top of the True Top 25 charts, with all four games ranking in the top eight. However, it didn't go any higher than #3 as usual leaders Sunday Night Football and The Big Bang Theory stayed in their usual spots. (Though TBBT nearly edged out a very weak SNF game.) We'll see if Game 6 and a possible Game 7 can go high enough to take the crown in week six. In a down week for Scandal, Grey's Anatomy had a rare turn with the True drama crown.

We dropped off to just three new shows on the list in week five as Sleepy Hollow took its first of two straight weeks off, though Mom and The Crazy Ones were both knockin' on the door. (And the Dracula premiere was not that far off itself.) Grimm's premiere made it two regular Friday programs, joining Shark Tank (which hit a True season high thanks to impressively tying its raw numbers high after a repeat The Neighbors).

Rank	Name	True	A18-49	ARank
1	Sunday Night Football	5.49	6.3	1
2	The Big Bang Theory	5.30	5.2	2
3	World Series (Wed)	4.37	4.2	5
4	The Voice Mon	4.06	4.3	4
5	Modern Family	3.93	3.9	7
6	World Series (Thu)	3.84	3.6	8
7	World Series (Sun)	3.78	4.6	3
8	World Series (Sat)	3.51	3.3	9
9	The Voice Tue	3.45	4.1	6
10	How I Met Your Mother	3.20	3.0	10
11	Grey's Anatomy	2.92	2.8	14
12	NCIS	2.77	3.0	10
13	Scandal	2.66	2.9	13
14	Criminal Minds	2.59	2.7	15
15	Agents of SHIELD	2.51	2.7	15
16	Shark Tank	2.51	2.0	32
17	The Blacklist	2.44	3.0	10
18	Survivor	2.40	2.4	20
19	Bones	2.26	2.2	25
20	2 Broke Girls	2.24	2.5	18
21	Grimm	2.20	1.8	36
22	The Millers	2.17	2.7	15
23	The Middle	2.15	2.2	25
24	Two and a Half Men	2.14	2.3	22
25	The Big Bang Theory (R)	2.12	2.4	20

Missing the True Top 25 but in the A18-49 list: Mom (t-#22 in A18-49, #26 in True), The Crazy Ones (t-#22 in A18-49, #27 in True), Once Upon a Time (t-#25 in A18-49, #28 in True), NCIS: Los Angeles (t-#18 in A18-49, #30 in True) and Person of Interest (t-#25 in A18-49, #35 in True).

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

I created the True 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 the 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.