The True Top 25, Week Ending 5/12/13 (2012-13 Week 33)

Week 33 was probably one of the "fullest-strength" weeks of the season, with almost all the heavy hitters still in play and some posting stronger-than-usual finale numbers. I'm not sure there's been a week when the bar to make the True Top 25 was as high as the 2.47 from this week. (But feel free to check the last 32 posts if so inclined!) Several shows like Saturday's NASCAR, New Girl and The Middle hung numbers that would've made the list almost any other week, but not this time.

The Big Bang Theory was tops, then The Voice, then Modern Family, then as usual a group including Idol, NCIS, Grey's, Two and a Half Men and newly ascendant Scandal. Despite the higher bar, three Friday/Saturday shows still made the list, including a strong Undercover Boss and a Saturday NBA playoff game. But this was a rare week without a single new show. (Elementary's 2.16 would've made the list some weeks, but it was all the way down at 35th this time.)

Rank	Name	True2	A18-49	ARank
1	The Big Bang Theory	6.36	4.9	1
2	The Voice Mon	4.22	4.1	2
3	The Voice Tue	4.19	3.7	3
4	Modern Family	3.84	3.3	5
5	American Idol Thu	3.69	2.9	9
6	NCIS	3.63	3.1	7
7	Grey's Anatomy	3.62	3.1	7
8	Scandal	3.45	3.2	6
9	Two and a Half Men	3.43	3.5	4
10	The Voice Wed	3.31	2.8	11
11	American Idol Wed	3.30	2.9	9
12	Survivor (Wed)	3.09	2.6	14
13	NBA Playoffs	3.09	2.1	25
14	How I Met Your Mother	3.08	2.6	14
15	Survivor (Sun)	2.91	2.7	12
16	The Office	2.79	2.3	20
17	Family Guy	2.74	2.4	17
18	2 Broke Girls	2.68	2.7	12
19	Once Upon a Time	2.68	2.3	20
20	Criminal Minds	2.65	2.5	16
21	Shark Tank	2.55	1.8	39
22	NCIS: Los Angeles	2.53	2.4	17
23	The Simpsons	2.53	2.0	28
24	Undercover Boss	2.49	1.6	46
25	Person of Interest	2.47	2.4	17

Missing the True Top 25 but in the A18-49 list: New Girl (t-#25 in A18-49, #27 in True2), Survivor (reunion) (t-#23 in A18-49, #28 in True2), Rules of Engagement (t-#25 in A18-49, #32 in True2), Mike and Molly (t-#20 in A18-49, #33 in True2) and CSI (t-#23 in A18-49, #39 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!