The True Top 25, Week Ending 10/2/11 (2011-12 Week Two)

I created the True Strength number last summer 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.

Two and a Half Men is on top for a second straight week, and for the second straight week the race between Modern Family and The Big Bang Theory for second-biggest scripted show is pretty close, with Modern Fam ekeing it out again for at least this week. (But Big Bang narrowed the gap to almost nothing.) 2 Broke Girls remains near the top in its new timeslot, while newbies Terra Nova and Suburgatory make the list in their opening weeks. Hawaii Five-0 is the only show in the True Top 25 that actually aired last week but wasn't in the top 25 (though it was close at 26th last week).

Rank	Name	TRUE	A18-49	ARank
1	Two and a Half Men	7.53	7.4	2
2	Sports: Sunday Night Football	6.58	7.7	1
3	Modern Family	6.13	5.7	3
4	The Big Bang Theory	6.09	4.9	4
5	2 Broke Girls	4.86	4.6	6
6	NCIS	4.63	4.2	9
7	How I Met Your Mother	4.53	4.5	7
8	X Factor Wed	4.14	4.1	10
9	X Factor Thu	4.13	3.9	11
10	Glee	3.99	3.7	12
11	New Girl	3.99	4.5	7
12	Mike and Molly	3.68	4.8	5
13	Grey's Anatomy	3.55	3.6	13
14	The Office	3.49	3.5	16
15	Survivor	3.44	3.2	21
16	Criminal Minds	3.39	3.6	13
17	Dancing with the Stars Mon	3.30	3.3	19
18	Suburgatory	3.28	3.3	19
19	Sports: CBS College FB	3.25	2.8	31
20	Terra Nova	3.06	3.1	24
21	The Middle	3.00	2.7	34
22	NCIS: Los Angeles	2.86	3.6	13
23	Hawaii Five-0	2.78	3.2	21
24	Family Guy	2.67	3.5	16
25	CSI	2.64	3.1	24

Missing the True Top 25 but in the A18-49 list: The Simpsons (t-#24 in A18-49, #27 in TRUE), The Amazing Race (t-#21 in A18-49, #38 in TRUE), Happy Endings (t-#24 in A18-49, #46 in TRUE) and football-fueled 60 Minutes (t-#16 in A18-49, #53 in TRUE).

Another important note: 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!