The True Top 25, Week Ending 4/8/12 (2011-12 Week 29)

The NCAA basketball championship on CBS topped this week's True Top 25 and was up year-to-year. The Big Bang Theory widened its lead over all the other entertainment options and more than doubled the next-strongest scripted show (fellow CBS Thursday option Person of Interest). Lots of the big shows were out of the mix yet again this week, but ABC Wednesday returns for the rest of the season starting in next week's edition!

This week, four Friday/Saturday shows hit the list, including the entire CBS Friday lineup. ABC's The Ten Commandments was the first movie to make it onto this list since It's a Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve.

Rank	Name	TRUE	A18-49	ARank
1	NCAA Championship	7.64	7.6	1
2	The Big Bang Theory	7.02	4.4	3
3	American Idol Wed	5.76	4.9	2
4	American Idol Thu	5.61	3.9	5
5	The Voice Mon	4.50	4.1	4
6	Survivor	3.59	2.8	11
7	Person of Interest	3.09	3.0	7
8	The Voice Tue	3.07	3.2	6
9	Grey's Anatomy	3.06	2.8	11
10	Dancing with the Stars Mon	3.01	2.9	9
11	Criminal Minds	3.01	3.0	7
12	Bones	2.93	2.5	15
13	CSI	2.83	2.9	9
14	Rules of Engagement	2.73	2.7	14
15	Dancing with the Stars Tue	2.62	2.8	11
16	The Mentalist	2.62	2.4	17
17	Undercover Boss	2.60	1.8	30
18	New Girl	2.32	2.3	18
19	Off Their Rockers	2.29	1.8	30
20	The Amazing Race	2.19	2.5	15
21	The Biggest Loser	2.16	2.0	25
22	Scandal	2.14	2.0	25
23	Blue Bloods	2.07	1.7	35
24	Movie: The Ten Commandments	2.06	1.5	44
25	CSI: NY	2.04	1.7	35

Missing the True Top 25 but in the A18-49 list: House (t-#18 in A18-49, #26 in TRUE), Celebrity Apprentice (t-#22 in A18-49, #28 in TRUE), Touch (t-#18 in A18-49, #33 in TRUE), Castle (t-#22 in A18-49, #34 in TRUE), Smash (t-#22 in A18-49, #46 in TRUE), golf-fueled 60 Minutes (#21 in A18-49, #47 in TRUE) and Body of Proof (t-#25 in A18-49, #49 in TRUE).

For more on the True Top 25, click to expand.

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!