The True Top 25, Week Ending 11/3/13 (2013-14 Week Six)

If only there'd been a Game 7, the World Series probably could've taken the top spot in the True Top 25. As it was, the conclusive Game 6 was quite close because SNF had another lower-end matchup, but Sunday Night Football eked it out again. Meanwhile, TV's two biggest sitcoms sat out the week so The Voice got a turn as top entertainment program, How I Met Your Mother got a turn as top sitcom, and Scandal took back the top drama honors. (It went behind The Blacklist and NCIS in raw numbers but got a boost from the Halloween viewing depression; plus, NCIS' timeslot was scored as very easy this week with Agents of SHIELD sitting out.)

Two of the three successful new dramas were off this week, so only The Blacklist and The Millers repped the new shows. For most of the season, Big Bang-fueled The Millers has had a large raw numbers lead and a small True lead on the other new CBS sitcoms. This week, it came all the way back to the pack in raw numbers but managed to maintain the True lead; while the repeat Big Bang was still a good lead-in, the Halloween hour had overall viewing reminiscent of a typical Friday or Saturday.

Rank	Name	True	A18-49	ARank
1	Sunday Night Football	5.55	6.3	1
2	World Series (Wed)	5.42	5.7	2
3	World Series (Mon)	4.27	4.1	4
4	The Voice Mon	4.15	4.3	3
5	How I Met Your Mother	3.18	3.0	8
6	Scandal	3.09	2.9	10
7	The Voice Tue	3.07	3.6	5
8	The Big Bang Theory (R-Thu8pm)	3.04	2.6	13
9	Saturday Night Football	3.01	2.8	11
10	Grey's Anatomy	2.65	2.6	13
11	It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown	2.64	2.2	22
12	The Blacklist	2.57	3.1	7
13	NCIS	2.52	3.0	8
14	The Big Bang Theory (R-Mon)	2.36	2.5	16
15	2 Broke Girls	2.33	2.7	12
16	Survivor	2.26	2.3	20
17	The Millers	2.25	2.1	25
18	The Big Bang Theory (R-Thu9:30)	2.15	2.1	25
19	Dancing with the Stars Mon	2.13	2.1	25
20	The Middle	2.12	2.2	22
21	Family Guy	2.11	2.5	16
22	Shark Tank	2.10	2.0	31
23	Criminal Minds	2.07	2.4	18
24	SNL Halloween	2.06	1.7	38
25	Once Upon a Time	2.04	2.3	20

Missing the True Top 25 but in the A18-49 list: Modern Family (R) (t-#22 in A18-49, #27 in True), Castle (t-#25 in A18-49, #28 in True), NCIS: Los Angeles (t-#13 in A18-49, #29 in True), The Simpsons (t-#18 in A18-49, #30 in True), Mom (t-#25 in A18-49, #31 in True), 60 Minutes (#6 in A18-49, #33 in True) and The Amazing Race (t-#25 in A18-49, #34 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.