The True Top 25, Week Ending 10/20/13 (2013-14 Week Four)

The hierarchy at the top remained the same in this week's True Top 25, though Sunday Night Football had a larger lead than usual thanks to an exorbitantly high mid-season number.

This week we went down to four new shows as The Crazy Ones dropped off for the first time, while a growing Shark Tank became the first regular Friday series to crack the top 25 this season. (And Undercover Boss was less than a tenth of a point away.)

Rank	Name	True	A18-49	ARank
1	Sunday Night Football	8.91	10.0	1
2	The Big Bang Theory	5.33	5.2	2
3	The Voice Mon	4.29	4.5	3
4	Modern Family	3.57	4.1	4
5	The Voice Tue	3.50	4.0	5
6	Scandal	3.34	3.3	6
7	How I Met Your Mother	3.02	3.1	8
8	Toy Story of TERROR!	2.99	3.1	8
9	NCIS	2.91	3.1	8
10	Grey's Anatomy	2.81	2.7	14
11	Sleepy Hollow	2.71	2.7	14
12	ALCS (Thu)	2.70	2.5	20
13	Agents of SHIELD	2.65	2.8	12
14	The Blacklist	2.58	3.0	11
15	ALCS (Sat)	2.54	2.3	23
16	The Millers	2.51	3.2	7
17	Survivor	2.48	2.6	17
18	Shark Tank	2.37	2.0	33
19	2 Broke Girls	2.35	2.6	17
20	ALCS (Wed)	2.32	2.4	21
21	Criminal Minds	2.23	2.7	14
22	Castle	2.21	2.2	26
23	The Biggest Loser	2.20	2.3	23
24	NCIS: Los Angeles	2.18	2.6	17
25	The Big Bang Theory (R)	2.14	2.2	26

Missing the True Top 25 but in the A18-49 list: The Crazy Ones (t-#21 in A18-49, #32 in True), 60 Minutes (t-#12 in A18-49, #34 in True) and Chicago Fire (t-#23 in A18-49, #39 in True).

For more on the True Top 25, click to expand.

I created the True 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 the 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.