CW True Power Rankings, November 2011

Here's the fifth and final leg of our journey through the five networks' scripted series by ranking their season-to-date TRUE averages. I've pushed the introductory stuff from the first post to the bottom.

Other networks: ABC | CBS | NBC | Fox | The CW

The difference with the CDub post is that I'm just throwing everything on the network together, since it's all dramas plus one in-contention unscripted show.

The Elite
1. The Vampire Diaries (1.60)

The only real drama in TVD's ratings is whether it can finish the season with double the TRUE of anything else on its network. That would be kind of pathetic for the network but a pretty remarkable achievement for the show.

The Last Bastions Division
2. Supernatural (0.83)
3. America's Next Top Model (0.82)

Yes, America, we're in the sixth year of this network, and the two strongest non-TVD shows on the CW are still shows that did not actually originate on the CW. This isn't exactly anything new for the CDub. Let's see if One Tree Hill can come on back with a bang and complete another round of embarrassment.

The Best of the Rest Division
4. The Secret Circle (0.76)
5. 90210 (0.75)
6. Ringer (0.71)
7. Nikita (0.69)

Airing out of a massive-by-CW-standards lead-in, The Secret Circle is easily its network's most overvalued show and, at least in my opinion, should be very much a part of the pack rather than clearly ahead of it. But it's still a little ahead of its fellow newbies, so I'm not calling for its ouster or anything. I'm just feeling a little less comfortable.

The Monday Night Division
8. Hart of Dixie (0.64)
9. Gossip Girl (0.59)

Hart of Dixie has overachieved relative to a lot of expectations, but that doesn't mean it's doing anything spectacular. It and Gossip Girl (which seems to have lost some of its W18-34 concentration juice this season) certainly make up the CDub's weakest evening. Perhaps Hart of Dixie can benefit from the departure of young female-heavy House at midseason.

The Dunzo Division
10. H8R (0.47)

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Welcome to the inaugural True Power Rankings! I'm just going to line up the shows of each network by their season average to date in my TRUE metric (through November 27). I don't think there's enough interesting stuff to do these with any regularity, so my tentative plan is to do them at the beginning and end of each sweeps period. (Meaning the next one would come in late January.) Future editions will perhaps be glammed up a bit.

FYI, these will replace the "True Bubble" posts I've done on a couple occasions in the past. Basically the same idea, except I'm throwing everything in rather than just the bubble shows.

I guess I don't read enough power rankings articles to know if this is commonplace, but I really liked the "division" setup that Bill Simmons uses, so I'm stealing it. Mine are a lot less clever.