The True Top 25, Week Ending 2/2/14 (2013-14 Week 19)

Super Week's True Top 25 was bookended by the game itself and CBS' Wednesday commercials special, while The Big Bang Theory returned to the top of the entertainment programming list. The Sunday True calculations for the game and for New Girl should be taken as even more "for entertainment purposes only" than usual, as I have to do a lot of spreadsheet re-arranging to account for Fox having a four-hour primetime.

The story that continues to percolate on this list is the takeover of Friday night television. Sure, pretty much all the Tuesday (State of the Union) and Sunday (Super Bowl) regulars were sitting out in this weird week, along with several staples on other nights. But Friday still put a whooping six shows in the top 25, and Last Man Standing was 26th!

Rank	Name	True	A18-49	ARank
1	Super Bowl	25.94	39.3	1
2	The Big Bang Theory	5.07	5.2	3
3	New Girl post-SB	4.22	11.4	2
4	American Idol Wed	3.40	3.8	4
5	American Idol Thu	3.40	3.2	6
6	How I Met Your Mother	3.30	3.8	4
7	The Blacklist	2.63	2.5	10
8	Shark Tank	2.55	2.1	13
9	The Bachelor	2.30	2.5	10
10	2 Broke Girls	2.30	3.0	7
11	Mike and Molly	2.21	2.6	8
12	The Millers	2.13	2.6	8
13	Hawaii Five-0	2.05	1.8	20
14	Law and Order: SVU	2.04	2.0	14
15	The Following	2.03	2.0	14
16	Elementary	2.02	1.9	17
17	Mom	1.99	2.4	12
18	SNL Sports Spectacular	1.92	1.8	20
19	Undercover Boss	1.91	1.7	23
20	Modern Family (R)	1.83	1.8	20
21	20/20	1.82	1.7	23
22	Bones	1.80	1.6	28
23	Blue Bloods	1.80	1.6	28
24	Two and a Half Men	1.78	2.0	14
25	Super Bowl's Greatest Commercials	1.74	1.9	17

Missing the True Top 25 but in the A18-49 list: The Crazy Ones (t-#17 in A18-49, #28 in True), Chicago PD (t-#23 in A18-49, #32 in True) and The Biggest Loser (t-#23 in A18-49, #35 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.