The True Top 25, Week Ending 1/27/13 (2012-13 Week 18)

American Idol had its first week atop the True Top 25, though it likely owes something to another The Big Bang Theory repeat and one of the weakest events of event season (the Pro Bowl finished 4th). Modern Family was the top scripted program by a decent margin, though I will give a shoutout to a season high in True2 from Criminal Minds, which tied its raw numbers high with a bad lead-in and having to face Idol and Modern.

With the other strong newbies sitting out the week, the premiere of The Following was the only representative for that crowd. If this Monday's week two numbers are any indication, it may stay on this list for awhile. Fox's UFC coverage was the only Friday/Saturday show thanks to repeats from the usual Friday candidates.

Rank	Name	True2	A18-49	ARank
1	American Idol Wed	5.20	5.5	1
2	American Idol Thu	4.96	5.2	2
3	Modern Family	4.30	4.2	3
4	Pro Bowl	3.59	4.0	4
5	Criminal Minds	3.45	3.1	11
6	The Big Bang Theory (R-Thu)	3.36	3.2	8
7	Grey's Anatomy	3.08	3.0	12
8	How I Met Your Mother	2.97	3.7	5
9	2 Broke Girls	2.96	3.7	5
10	The Following	2.87	3.2	8
11	Mike and Molly	2.80	3.3	7
12	Family Guy	2.40	2.9	13
13	The Middle	2.37	2.5	16
14	UFC	2.36	2.1	26
15	CSI	2.27	2.6	14
16	The Big Bang Theory (R-Mon)	2.24	3.2	8
17	The Bachelor	2.21	2.5	16
18	The Office	2.13	2.0	28
19	The Biggest Loser	2.13	2.4	18
20	Suburgatory	2.02	2.2	22
21	Two and a Half Men (R)	2.00	2.2	22
22	New Girl	1.99	2.2	22
23	Parenthood	1.98	1.8	35
24	The Simpsons	1.97	2.3	19
25	Bones	1.93	2.3	19

Missing the True Top 25 but in the A18-49 list: Hawaii Five-0 (t-#19 in A18-49, #27 in True2), Glee (t-#14 in A18-49, #28 in True2) and American Dad! (t-#22 in A18-49, #30 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!