The True Top 25, Week Ending 3/2/14 (2013-14 Week 23)

The Olympics hiatus is finally over, and the networks came back in week 23 to varying results. ABC in particular had an up and down week; their Academy Awards topped the charts and grew year-to-year, and big returns from Grey's Anatomy and Scandal plus a season high True for Shark Tank helped the network score a whooping five of this week's True top 10. On the other hand... there were the series premieres. Even a Modern Family-fueled Mixology couldn't crack the raw numbers top 25 (t-32nd) and was way off the map in True (47th). And Mind Games (75th) had a lower True than the CW's big four programs.

The Big Bang Theory returned with its usual comfortable lead on the rest of the entertainment field, and premiere week of The Voice held off Scandal and Modern Family for the next two spots. Three new shows cracked the list, with the biggest notable being a big surge for Chicago PD in a crossover with Law and Order: SVU. Only Shark Tank and 20/20 represented Friday night, but Grimm (27th) and Hawaii Five-0 (28th) were knocking on the door.

Rank	Name	True	A18-49	ARank
1	Academy Awards	9.01	13.1	1
2	The Big Bang Theory	5.38	5.0	2
3	The Voice Mon	4.54	4.7	3
4	The Voice Tue	3.77	3.7	4
5	Scandal	3.71	3.4	6
6	Modern Family	3.69	3.1	7
7	How I Met Your Mother	3.64	3.6	5
8	Grey's Anatomy	3.34	3.1	7
9	American Idol Wed	2.88	2.7	10
10	Shark Tank	2.79	2.1	23
11	NCIS	2.73	2.6	12
12	American Idol Thu	2.70	2.4	17
13	The Bachelor (Mon)	2.58	2.5	13
14	Survivor	2.58	2.4	17
15	The Bachelor (Tue)	2.53	2.5	13
16	Chicago PD	2.50	2.2	21
17	Criminal Minds	2.49	2.2	21
18	The Blacklist	2.48	3.1	7
19	2 Broke Girls	2.36	2.5	13
20	Law and Order: SVU	2.32	2.0	25
21	Two and a Half Men	2.19	2.5	13
22	The Millers	2.19	2.7	10
23	20/20	2.13	1.8	29
24	NCIS: Los Angeles	2.07	2.3	19
25	Mike and Molly	2.05	2.1	23

Missing the True Top 25 but in the A18-49 list: Growing Up Fisher (R) (t-#25 in A18-49, #39 in True) and About a Boy (R) (t-#19 in A18-49, #40 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.