The True Top 25, Week Ending 10/21/12 (2012-13 Week Four)

Sunday Night Football won the True Top 25 once again, but a season low matchup between Pittsburgh and Cincinnati meant it wasn't on top by all that much. The Big Bang Theory was back into the entertainment programming lead, rather easily holding off The Voice and Modern Family which had very similar raw numbers but easier situations.

Lots of Friday/Saturday action this week. Shark Tank cracked a 2.0 demo for the first time ever and was joined by a baseball game in the 2.0 column on Friday. ABC's Saturday football coverage also made it onto the list. As for the new shows, it remains rather grim. Revolution still looks like a pretty legitimate success, rising week-to-week, but Elementary is the only other representative, and it hasn't stopped dropping yet. We have to drop all the way into the mid-30's before we find other new shows: Last Resort (#35), Nashville (#36), Partners (#38).

Rank	Name	True2	A18-49	ARank
1	Sunday Night Football	4.95	6.7	1
2	The Big Bang Theory	4.54	4.8	2
3	The Voice Mon	4.13	4.8	2
4	Modern Family	4.04	4.7	4
5	The Voice Tue	3.89	4.6	5
6	Two and a Half Men	3.44	4.0	6
7	Grey's Anatomy	3.40	3.4	8
8	2 Broke Girls	3.03	3.4	8
9	Revolution	2.81	3.3	10
10	Mike and Molly	2.76	3.0	14
11	How I Met Your Mother	2.69	3.2	12
12	Once Upon a Time	2.65	3.3	10
13	Criminal Minds	2.64	3.1	13
14	Survivor	2.50	2.8	15
15	Person of Interest	2.48	2.8	15
16	NLCS (Friday)	2.35	2.0	29
17	Shark Tank	2.34	2.0	29
18	The Office	2.23	2.1	25
19	The Middle	2.23	2.5	20
20	Elementary	2.23	2.3	21
21	The X Factor Wed	2.20	2.3	21
22	Saturday Night Football	2.09	1.8	37
23	Revenge	2.07	2.8	15
24	Suburgatory	2.03	2.8	15
25	Castle	2.02	2.0	29

Missing the True Top 25 but in the A18-49 list: Hawaii Five-0 (t-#25 in A18-49, #26 in True2), NLCS (Sunday) (t-#21 in A18-49, #27 in True2), 60 Minutes (#7 in A18-49, #28 in True2), Dancing with the Stars Monday (t-#25 in A18-49, #29 in True2), CSI (t-#21 in A18-49, #30 in True2) and The Amazing Race (#19 in A18-49, #33 in True2).

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

I created the True Strength number 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!