The True Top 25, Week Ending 5/26/13 (2012-13 Week 35)

Modern Family was the top show of a relatively quiet last few days of the TV season, posting the biggest raw number in the most competitive timeslot (against MasterChef and the finales of Criminal Minds and Law and Order: SVU). 20 of the 25 slots on this list came from the in-season portion of the week, plus three Thursday shows (Hell's Kitchen the only original), a Friday Shark Tank repeat and Sunday's NASCAR.

The True Top 25 will return sporadically over the course of the summer!

Rank	Name	True2	A18-49	ARank
1	Modern Family	4.63	3.7	1
2	The Voice Mon	3.77	3.5	2
3	The Voice Tue	3.41	3.2	3
4	Criminal Minds	3.31	2.8	4
5	Dancing with the Stars Tue	3.04	2.7	5
6	Dancing with the Stars Mon	2.87	2.6	6
7	NASCAR	2.75	1.9	18
8	The Big Bang Theory (SR)	2.73	2.2	8
9	MasterChef (9pm)	2.73	2.3	7
10	Hell's Kitchen	2.70	2.2	8
11	MasterChef (8pm)	2.60	2.1	10
12	The Middle	2.51	2.0	14
13	Mike and Molly (R)	2.34	2.1	10
14	The Big Bang Theory (R-Mon)	2.32	2.1	10
15	Devastation in Oklahoma	2.23	2.0	14
16	So You Think You Can Dance	2.22	2.0	14
17	Shark Tank (SR)	2.19	1.6	26
18	Law and Order: SVU	2.16	1.7	23
19	Nashville	2.08	1.9	18
20	Two and a Half Men (SR)	2.08	1.8	21
21	Rules of Engagement	2.06	1.8	21
22	How to Live	2.05	2.1	10
23	Hawaii Five-0	1.99	2.0	14
24	Chicago Fire	1.92	1.7	23
25	Modern Family (R)	1.90	1.6	26

Missing the True Top 25 but in the A18-49 list: Grimm (t-#23 in A18-49, #29 in True2) and Revolution (t-#18 in A18-49, #31 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!