The True Top 25, Week Ending 2/9/14 (2013-14 Week 20)

The vast majority of high-rated entertainment programs will be ducking the Winter Olympics over the next couple weeks, but this week saw most of the Monday to Thursday heavy hitters fit in one more episode. Airing against the bonus night of Olympics and American Idol, The Big Bang Theory was easily the highest-rated entertainment program. It actually had a season high in True, as the show was flat week-to-week even as the Olympics created about four more points of competition than normal but produced no discernible growth in overall viewing (at least not in the 8:00 half-hour).

Only two newbies made the cut this week, starting with The Millers (which, much like TBBT, had a good raw numbers hold despite grading out with a tougher situation) and ending with yet another low-2's for Agents of SHIELD. However, new shows did occupy four of the first seven spots outside of the top 25!

Rank	Name	True	A18-49	ARank
1	Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony	8.72	8.6	1
2	Winter Olympics (Sat)	7.48	6.3	3
3	Winter Olympics (Thu)	6.74	6.0	4
4	Winter Olympics (Sun)	6.74	7.2	2
5	The Big Bang Theory	5.78	5.2	5
6	American Idol Wed	3.66	3.9	6
7	American Idol Thu	3.58	3.1	9
8	Modern Family	3.55	3.5	8
9	How I Met Your Mother	3.29	3.8	7
10	NCIS	2.91	3.1	9
11	Criminal Minds	2.84	2.8	12
12	Mike and Molly	2.42	2.7	14
13	The Bachelor	2.41	2.6	15
14	NCIS: Los Angeles	2.40	2.8	12
15	The Millers	2.32	2.6	15
16	2 Broke Girls	2.31	3.0	11
17	The Biggest Loser	2.26	2.2	18
18	Agents of SHIELD	2.13	2.2	18
19	The Beatles: The Night that Changed America	2.09	2.1	21
20	The Middle	2.06	2.2	18
21	CSI	2.05	2.0	24
22	Castle	2.03	2.1	21
23	Elementary	1.99	1.8	28
24	Law and Order: SVU	1.96	1.8	28
25	Two and a Half Men	1.95	1.9	25

Missing the True Top 25 but in the A18-49 list: Mom (t-#17 in A18-49, #26 in True), Person of Interest (t-#21 in A18-49, #27 in True), The Following (t-#25 in A18-49, #29 in True) and Almost Human (t-#25 in A18-49, #30 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.