The True Top 25, Week Ending 6/30/13 (2012-13 Week 40)

The True Top 25 is back to check in on the top broadcast shows for the first of three times this summer. This time we found a relatively big event week, with the final game of the Stanley Cup Finals going up against CBS' huge Under the Dome premiere. Dome still has a chance to settle at a chart-topping level in future weeks, and it's currently joined at the elite summer level by America's Got Talent and the two Gordon Ramsay shows. It's yet to be determined whether Big Brother is on that level or whether it'll settle into the Bachelorette/So You Think You Can Dance second tier, as its Sunday result suggested.

Even in a summer of relatively weak originals, just nine repeats made the list, the top three of which were from one show. Only Big Bang and sometimes Fox's animation remain capable of getting north of a 1.3 or so in the summer, which is why we will probably continue to see the volume of summer originals increase.

Rank	Name	True2	A18-49	ARank
1	Stanley Cup Finals	3.86	3.3	1
2	Under the Dome	3.72	3.3	1
3	America's Got Talent Tue	2.96	2.6	3
4	MasterChef	2.84	2.5	4
5	The Big Bang Theory (SR-Thu)	2.79	2.1	7
6	MasterChef	2.78	2.2	5
7	Big Brother Wed	2.78	2.2	5
8	Hell's Kitchen	2.66	2.1	7
9	The Bachelorette	2.25	2.0	9
10	The Big Bang Theory (SR-Mon-9:00)	2.19	1.9	11
11	So You Think You Can Dance	2.12	1.7	13
12	The Big Bang Theory (SR-Mon-9:30)	2.10	2.0	9
13	Big Brother Sun	2.08	1.9	11
14	Dateline Fri (S)	1.81	1.3	15
15	Ann Curry Reports	1.79	1.3	15
16	2 Broke Girls (SR)	1.68	1.3	15
17	Family Guy (SR)	1.63	1.5	14
18	Primetime: What Would You Do?	1.63	1.1	25
19	Rookie Blue	1.62	1.2	21
20	Criminal Minds (SR)	1.62	1.3	15
21	20/20 (S)	1.61	1.1	25
22	Modern Family (SR)	1.56	1.1	25
23	Extreme Weight Loss	1.51	1.2	21
24	Two and a Half Men (SR)	1.49	1.3	15
25	Off Their Rockers (SR)	1.45	1.1	25

Missing the True Top 25 but in the A18-49 list: Many repeats, but I will just point out the two originals: The American Baking Competition (t-#21 in A18-49, #34 in True2) and Mistresses (t-#25 in A18-49, #37 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.