The True Top 25, Week Ending 11/27/11 (2011-12 Week Ten)

Football's back on top of the True Top 25 in what's really the first week with a significant number of original lineups preempted. In what I've been using as a benchmark for the "strength" of the week in general, just 14 shows topped a 3.00 TRUE; that's the lowest number this season. However, CBS Monday was in originals yet again, so its shows have their usual significant presence near the top. Despite losing Dancing with the Stars as competition, Two and a Half Men posted its Truly best number in seven weeks. It was the top scripted show in TRUE for the first time in eight weeks thanks to The Big Bang Theory being in repeats and Modern Family taking a bit of a hit on Thanksgiving Eve.

Even though it was in repeats, Big Bang still has a presence high on this list, and its TRUE number actually slightly topped that huge Halloween Modern Family repeat (3.93 TRUE) to become the season's Truly biggest encore. But I do want to note again that I think the number's a little inflated because of its proximity to CBS' high-rated Thanksgiving afternoon football game. For reference, if you give Big Bang a 5.00 lead-in, its number would be a 3.55 instead.

Finale week of Dancing with the Stars did well relatively speaking, posting two of its three Truly biggest telecasts of the season.

Rank	Name	TRUE	A18-49	ARank
1	Sunday Night Football	6.09	7.9	1
2	Two and a Half Men	5.47	5.2	2
3	Modern Family	5.08	4.6	3
4	How I Met Your Mother	4.90	4.4	5
5	Dancing with the Stars Tue	4.60	4.1	7
6	2 Broke Girls	4.58	4.6	3
7	The Big Bang Theory (R)	4.19	3.3	12
8	NCIS	4.01	3.5	9
9	Dancing with the Stars Mon	3.69	3.5	9
10	The X Factor Wed	3.57	3.2	13
11	Mike and Molly	3.54	4.2	6
12	Last Man Standing	3.26	2.7	18
13	NCIS: Los Angeles	3.08	3.0	14
14	The X Factor Thu	3.08	2.6	19
15	Suburgatory	2.95	2.5	22
16	The Middle	2.93	2.5	22
17	Ice Age: A Mammoth Christmas	2.81	2.3	25
18	Once Upon a Time	2.73	3.4	11
19	Hawaii Five-0	2.63	2.8	16
20	House	2.53	2.5	22
21	Castle	2.41	2.3	25
22	Rules of Engagement (R)	2.37	2.2	27
23	Revenge	2.32	2.1	30
24	The Simpsons	2.31	2.6	19
25	Family Guy	2.27	2.8	16

Missing the True Top 25 but in the A18-49 list: football-fueled 60 Minutes (#8 in A18-49, #26 in TRUE), Happy Endings (t-#19 in A18-49, #33 in TRUE) and The Amazing Race (#15 in A18-49, #38 in TRUE).

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.

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!