The True Top 25, Week Ending 10/7/12 (2012-13 Week Two)

Was late getting my half-hour breakdowns last week, so here's the True Top 25 for week two of the season. I updated the SpotVault without the True2 numbers last week, but everything from weeks two and three will be filled in tomorrow.

Sunday Night Football had another True Top 25 victory, but an underwhelming result on a really high-viewed night meant it just barely held off The Big Bang Theory for the title. Big Bang was a rather unchallenged #1 among entertainment programs thanks to Modern Family being out of the mix. The usual Tuesday edition of The Voice also sat out the week, but the clips show still ranked #12.

Shark Tank carries the banner for the Friday shows at #24, though it's not totally ludicrous that Grimm (#37 but just 0.2 points away) could get there sometime soon. The New Show Watch remains downright dire. Revolution dropped out of the top ten, and yet it may be the only member still on the list starting next week; Elementary dropped by nearly 20% in week two and nearly left the list entirely. Last Resort nearly stayed on (2.02, #26), but its week three drop means it's probably gone as well. Then you have to drop all the way to number forty-two to find the next new show. Yeesh.

Rank	Name	True2	A18-49	ARank
1	Sunday Night Football	5.06	7.2	1
2	The Big Bang Theory	4.78	4.9	2
3	The Voice Mon	4.04	4.6	3
4	Grey's Anatomy	3.81	3.8	4
5	NCIS	3.40	3.7	5
6	2 Broke Girls	3.35	3.5	8
7	The X Factor Thu	3.30	3.2	13
8	The X Factor Wed	3.26	3.5	8
9	Two and a Half Men	3.14	3.6	6
10	Survivor	2.84	3.0	17
11	Revolution	2.81	3.2	13
12	The Voice (R)	2.81	3.0	17
13	Person of Interest	2.80	3.0	17
14	Once Upon a Time	2.79	3.4	10
15	How I Met Your Mother	2.74	3.3	12
16	Family Guy	2.70	3.4	10
17	Mike and Molly	2.57	2.9	20
18	NCIS: Los Angeles	2.45	3.1	15
19	Glee	2.43	2.6	23
20	New Girl	2.41	2.8	21
21	The Simpsons	2.41	3.1	15
22	The Office	2.32	2.2	30
23	Elementary	2.28	2.5	27
24	Shark Tank	2.16	1.8	47
25	The Middle	2.12	2.2	30

Missing the True Top 25 but in the A18-49 list: American Dad! (t-#23 in A18-49, #27 in True2), The Amazing Race (t-#23 in A18-49, #28 in True2), Revenge (t-#23 in A18-49, #32 in True2) and 60 Minutes (t-#6 in A18-49, #35 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!