The True Top 25, Week Ending 3/9/14 (2013-14 Week 24)

For the second straight week, ABC had five of the True Top 10, this time thanks to a genuine surprise from the enormous premiere of Resurrection. This was the fifth series premiere of the 2013-14 season to hit a 3.5 or higher demo, after we had just one (Revolution) last season. Just keep this in mind when you read the "people are becoming less inclined to watch new shows" trend pieces during bad development seasons.

And it may not be a stretch to say it is the most impressive premiere rating in a very long time. It's the second-highest True for a series premiere this season, and you could argue it should be higher if the cable competition adjustment were less timid. In True, it handily out-gunned similarly raw-rated The Blacklist (Voice lead-in), The Crazy Ones (Big Bang lead-in) and Sleepy Hollow (relatively little competition). Only Agents of SHIELD started bigger, and we all know that had very good external reasons to do so.

The other stuff was pretty much as usual: The Big Bang Theory was easily the #1 broadcast program. Shark Tank and 20/20 were the Friday representatives. And The Blacklist and The Millers represented the new shows, making for a foursome alongside the impressive premieres of Resurrection and Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey.

Rank	Name	True	A18-49	ARank
1	The Big Bang Theory	5.57	5.3	1
2	The Voice Tue	4.29	4.1	3
3	The Voice Mon	4.16	4.5	2
4	Resurrection	3.78	3.8	4
5	Modern Family	3.74	3.4	5
6	How I Met Your Mother	3.02	3.3	6
7	Scandal	2.98	2.8	8
8	Grey's Anatomy	2.95	2.6	11
9	American Idol Wed	2.92	2.7	9
10	Shark Tank	2.78	2.1	23
11	NCIS	2.74	2.5	15
12	Criminal Minds	2.66	2.6	11
13	Once Upon a Time	2.63	2.4	17
14	Survivor	2.62	2.4	17
15	American Idol Thu	2.53	2.2	20
16	The Millers	2.48	2.9	7
17	Two and a Half Men	2.42	2.6	11
18	The Blacklist	2.36	2.7	9
19	Family Guy	2.36	2.2	20
20	Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey	2.33	2.1	23
21	2 Broke Girls	2.27	2.6	11
22	20/20	2.26	1.8	32
23	The Bachelor	2.25	2.3	19
24	The Middle	2.14	1.9	27
25	Elementary	2.12	1.8	32

Missing the True Top 25 but in the A18-49 list: Mike and Molly (t-#20 in A18-49, #27 in True), NCIS: Los Angeles (t-#23 in A18-49, #33 in True) and About a Boy (t-#15 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.