The True Top 25, Week Ending 2/12/12 (2011-12 Week 21)

With all the broadcast networks at full strength, it was a deep week for the True Top 25, with 21 shows cracking the 3.00 plateau. The second-biggest Grammys ever ran away from the entertainment programming field, but there was a pretty close race at the top of the entertainment pack. The Wednesday American Idol eked out a win over surging The Big Bang Theory, but it was so close that it feels like it could change any week now. The Voice was a fairly close fourth behind Big Bang and the Idols, but it seems likely to fade a bit from that pack as the Super Bowl bounce dissipates.

NBC got a nice premiere out of Smash, but I'm quite sure the show will be out of the top 25 next week (and probably going forward). The premiere of The River (2.10) finished #38, and based on the Tuesday overnights that should only get worse.

Rank	Name	TRUE	A18-49	ARank
1	Special: The Grammy Awards	15.30	14.1	1
2	American Idol Wed	7.48	6.1	3
3	The Big Bang Theory	7.43	5.6	5
4	American Idol Thu	7.38	5.8	4
5	The Voice	7.00	6.7	2
6	Modern Family	5.79	5.5	6
7	How I Met Your Mother	4.97	4.0	10
8	NCIS	4.35	4.2	9
9	2 Broke Girls	4.19	4.3	7
10	Grey's Anatomy	4.14	4.0	10
11	Two and a Half Men	3.71	4.3	7
12	Smash	3.39	3.8	12
13	Glee	3.35	3.3	15
14	Criminal Minds	3.29	3.3	15
15	Once Upon a Time	3.27	3.0	20
16	The Middle	3.17	2.6	26
17	Rob	3.12	3.3	15
18	New Girl	3.08	3.5	13
19	Mike and Molly	3.04	3.4	14
20	Person of Interest	3.04	3.3	15
21	The Mentalist	3.00	3.0	20
22	Suburgatory	2.71	2.6	26
23	House	2.69	2.5	29
24	The Office	2.66	2.5	29
25	The Bachelor	2.66	2.6	26

Missing the True Top 25 but in the A18-49 list: 60 Minutes (t-#26 in A18-49, #27 in TRUE), NCIS: Los Angeles (#19 in A18-49, #32 in TRUE), Mobbed (t-#20 in A18-49, #40 in TRUE) and Happy Endings (#24 in A18-49, #43 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!