The True Top 25, Week Ending 1/26/14 (2013-14 Week 18)

Sunday Event Season continued with the Grammy Awards and Pro Bowl claiming the top two spots in this week's True Top 25. American Idol took large post-premiere slides on both Wednesday and Thursday, but the Wednesday edition held off competing Modern Family to rate highest among entertainment programs. (The Big Bang Theory is back in originals next week, though its regular slot repeat isn't that far out of the lead.)

Among the new shows, it was regulars The Blacklist and Sleepy Hollow (x2), plus the surprise return of a spiking Brooklyn Nine-Nine. The show benefited from Agents of SHIELD and NCIS both being in repeats, to be sure, but the size of its growth was a couple ticks bigger than the True formula would've expected. (Also worth noting that it eked onto the list largely due to the bar being pretty low this week as several regular lineups were off the map.)

On another big Friday for broadcast, Shark Tank and 20/20 were back on the list (and well within the raw numbers list as well); and this time, they had company in the biggest Friday episode of Bones yet. And Grimm was only about a hundredth away from making it four Friday representatives.

Rank	Name	True	A18-49	ARank
1	Grammy Awards	8.98	9.9	1
2	Pro Bowl	4.35	3.8	3
3	American Idol Wed	3.79	4.0	2
4	Modern Family	3.55	3.4	4
5	American Idol Thu	3.20	3.4	4
6	The Big Bang Theory (R-8pm)	3.00	3.0	7
7	How I Met Your Mother	2.72	3.1	6
8	Shark Tank	2.63	2.2	14
9	The Blacklist	2.55	2.3	11
10	Criminal Minds	2.44	2.2	14
11	Family Guy	2.37	2.0	18
12	The Big Bang Theory (R-9pm)	2.30	2.5	9
13	The Middle	2.25	2.3	11
14	Sleepy Hollow (9pm)	2.19	2.4	10
15	2 Broke Girls	2.18	2.7	8
16	The Bachelor	2.13	2.3	11
17	20/20	2.10	1.9	21
18	Castle	2.07	2.0	18
19	The Simpsons	2.05	1.7	32
20	Bones	2.04	1.8	28
21	Sleepy Hollow (8pm)	2.00	2.2	14
22	Law and Order: SVU	1.93	1.8	28
23	Mike and Molly	1.84	2.1	17
24	Brooklyn Nine-Nine	1.79	1.9	21
25	American Dad!	1.77	1.5	37

Missing the True Top 25 but in the A18-49 list: New Girl (t-#21 in A18-49, #26 in True), The Biggest Loser (t-#21 in A18-49, #28 in True), Mom (t-#21 in A18-49, #29 in True), 60 Minutes (t-#18 in A18-49, #31 in True), NCIS (R) (t-#21 in A18-49, #33 in True) and The Millers (R) (t-#21 in A18-49, #47 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.