The True Top 25, Week Ending 11/17/13 (2013-14 Week Eight)

Sunday Night Football won another True Top 25 with an incredible number for the second half of the regular season, further cementing Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning as one of American culture's top ratings draws. The Big Bang Theory was back in the entertainment programming driver's seat, while Scandal re-captured the lead among dramas. A slumping Shark Tank still eked out a spot on the list, while fellow Friday offerings Undercover Boss and Grimm were each within a tenth of a point of making the cut. Though The Millers remained just off the list, we went up to four new shows represented as the NFL-inflated premiere of Almost Human made the cut (though Agents of SHIELD was fairly close to dropping off). Almost Human figures to be back next week after a decent 2.3 Monday premiere.

Rank	Name	True	A18-49	ARank
1	Sunday Night Football	9.60	9.9	1
2	The Big Bang Theory	5.11	5.2	2
3	Modern Family	3.83	3.8	3
4	The Voice Mon	3.73	3.8	3
5	The Voice Tue	3.20	3.4	5
6	How I Met Your Mother	3.11	3.1	6
7	Scandal	3.00	2.9	10
8	The Blacklist	2.93	3.0	8
9	Grey's Anatomy	2.76	2.6	13
10	NCIS	2.70	3.0	8
11	Sleepy Hollow	2.65	2.6	13
12	Criminal Minds	2.64	2.7	11
13	2 Broke Girls	2.39	2.7	11
14	Family Guy	2.33	2.2	20
15	Mike and Molly	2.30	2.3	19
16	The Middle	2.28	2.4	17
17	Castle	2.27	2.0	25
18	Almost Human	2.27	3.1	6
19	Survivor	2.26	2.5	16
20	NCIS: Los Angeles	2.06	2.4	17
21	Shark Tank	2.06	1.7	36
22	Two and a Half Men	2.06	2.1	23
23	The Amazing Race	2.03	2.0	25
24	Agents of SHIELD	2.03	2.2	20
25	Bones (Mon)	2.01	2.0	25

Missing the True Top 25 but in the A18-49 list: The Millers (t-#13 in A18-49, #28 in True), Person of Interest (t-#25 in A18-49, #32 in True), Chicago Fire (t-#20 in A18-49, #34 in True), The Crazy Ones (t-#23 in A18-49, #37 in True) and Super Fun Night (t-#25 in A18-49, #44 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.