The True Top 25, Week Ending 4/13/14 (2013-14 Week 29)

We may be a month past Daylight Saving, but week 29 was at least as bad for TV ratings as that week was. And this showed up in bigger-picture ways; the downturn in overall viewing week-to-week was even more significant this week than four weeks ago, suggesting that some late winter weather may have kept ratings afloat to a certain degree in March. While this showed up in many a raw rating, it also meant that a show like NCIS that went against this gravity (getting its highest rating in five episodes, despite its lowest-viewed slot of the season) could post a really high-end True score.

The Big Bang Theory lost out to the NCAA basketball finals for the True crown this week, but it still demolished all other entertainment series. Scandal was the top drama again, edging its lead-in Grey's Anatomy and the surging NCIS. Agents of SHIELD, The Millers and the return of Resurrection represented the new shows, while Shark Tank and Saturday's NASCAR were the only weekend series.

Rank	Name	True	A18-49	ARank
1	NCAA Championship	8.31	7.2	1
2	The Big Bang Theory	5.94	4.7	2
3	The Voice Mon	3.74	3.5	3
4	The Voice Tue	3.56	2.9	5
5	Scandal	3.31	3.0	4
6	NCIS	3.21	2.6	6
7	Grey's Anatomy	3.09	2.6	6
8	Survivor	2.93	2.4	9
9	Two and a Half Men	2.69	2.4	9
10	Law and Order: SVU	2.56	2.1	14
11	Shark Tank (Fri)	2.52	1.8	21
12	Dancing with the Stars	2.43	2.2	13
13	Criminal Minds	2.42	2.3	11
14	American Idol Thu	2.39	1.8	21
15	American Idol Wed	2.39	2.0	17
16	Agents of SHIELD	2.38	1.9	20
17	NASCAR	2.29	1.5	37
18	The Millers	2.21	2.5	8
19	NCIS: Los Angeles	2.20	2.3	11
20	Family Guy	2.18	2.1	14
21	Shark Tank (Thu)	2.14	1.7	25
22	Chicago Fire	2.14	1.8	21
23	Once Upon a Time	2.13	2.0	17
24	Resurrection	2.11	2.1	14
25	The Big Bang Theory (R)	2.06	2.0	17

Missing the True Top 25 but in the A18-49 list: The Amazing Race (t-#21 in A18-49, #28 in True), CSI (t-#25 in A18-49, #33 in True), The Simpsons (t-#25 in A18-49, #39 in True), The Crazy Ones (t-#25 in A18-49, #41 in True) and About a Boy (t-#25 in A18-49, #53 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.