The True Top 25, Week Ending 12/18/11 (2011-12 Week 13)

Sunday Night Football won the True Top 25 yet again this week despite hitting its second-lowest numbers of the season. This was the year's last "heavily original" week, but overall viewing still dipped a bit from recent weeks (and should dip even more next week). 2 Broke Girls aired at 8/7c for the first time and, while it hit a demo series low, it was pretty close to its 4.47 TRUE average to date. It took top scripted honors as Two and a Half Men had a particularly weak outing, tying a season low in demo despite little competition (especially from ESPN's weak football game). Perhaps its pairing with original 2BG has meant more than I gave it credit for.

This week had the most 3.00+ scores in three weeks thanks in large part to a triple-dose of Survivor. Prepare for that number to drastically decline next week, as football and the two-night finale of The X Factor feel like the only originals that'll have much of a shot to get there.

Rank	Name	TRUE	A18-49	ARank
1	Sports: Sunday Night Football	5.67	6.1	1
2	2 Broke Girls	4.36	4.2	3
3	Two and a Half Men	3.88	4.7	2
4	NCIS	3.73	3.6	7
5	The X Factor Wed	3.46	3.4	9
6	Survivor (Sun)	3.35	4.0	4
7	Survivor (Wed)	3.24	3.1	14
8	Fear Factor (8pm)	3.17	3.3	11
9	Criminal Minds	3.16	3.4	9
10	Survivor (reunion)	3.15	3.1	14
11	Mike and Molly	3.12	4.0	4
12	The Big Bang Theory (R)	3.10	2.9	18
13	The X Factor Thu	3.06	2.9	18
14	Glee	3.06	3.0	16
15	The Biggest Loser Fall	2.92	2.7	23
16	New Girl	2.91	3.3	11
17	Fear Factor (9pm)	2.85	3.5	8
18	CSI	2.83	2.9	18
19	2 Broke Girls (R)	2.77	3.3	11
20	NCIS: Los Angeles	2.69	3.0	16
21	Rules of Engagement	2.64	2.7	23
22	The Mentalist	2.51	2.7	23
23	60 Minutes	2.50	4.0	4
24	Person of Interest	2.48	2.8	21
25	Last Man Standing	2.35	2.2	30

Missing the True Top 25 but in the A18-49 list: Hawaii Five-0 (t-#21 in A18-49, #26 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!