The True Top 25, Week Ending 1/12/14 (2013-14 Week 16)

A couple special events topped the first relatively normal week of 2014: CBS' NFL playoff game on Saturday and NBC's Golden Globes on Sunday. The Big Bang Theory blew all other entertainment options out of the water, while NCIS was easily the top drama even on a Tuesday with a bizarrely high PUT estimate.

A season high Shark Tank cracked the top ten, while a strong Hawaii Five-0 also made the cut to give Friday programming a second representative. And a whooping five new shows made the list, including the pilots of Chicago PD and Intelligence (at least one of which will not be making the cut going forward).

Rank	Name	True	A18-49	ARank
1	NFL Playoffs	11.49	10.2	1
2	Golden Globe Awards	5.99	6.5	2
3	The Big Bang Theory	4.99	5.7	3
4	Modern Family	3.64	3.5	5
5	Family Guy	2.70	2.7	8
6	The Bachelor	2.60	2.7	8
7	NCIS	2.58	3.0	7
8	People's Choice Awards	2.58	2.4	10
9	Shark Tank	2.43	2.1	18
10	Two and a Half Men	2.36	2.4	10
11	The Middle	2.31	2.2	15
12	The Millers	2.26	3.3	6
13	The Simpsons	2.25	2.2	15
14	Law and Order: SVU	2.21	2.1	18
15	Elementary	2.15	2.0	20
16	Chicago Fire	2.13	2.0	20
17	Chicago PD	2.10	2.0	20
18	The Mentalist	2.09	1.8	25
19	American Dad!	2.08	2.3	14
20	60 Minutes	2.04	4.0	4
21	Person of Interest	2.03	2.0	20
22	The Crazy Ones	2.02	2.4	10
23	Agents of SHIELD	1.95	2.2	15
24	Hawaii Five-0	1.91	1.6	34
25	Intelligence	1.91	2.4	10

Missing the True Top 25 but in the A18-49 list: Bob's Burgers (t-#20 in A18-49, #26 in True), Almost Human (t-#25 in A18-49, #31 in True) and The Good Wife (t-#25 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.