The True Top 25, Week Ending 5/18/14 (2013-14 Week 34)

In the last full week of the regular season, The Big Bang Theory had one last domination of the standings. A significant finale spike in one of its lowest-viewed slots of the season produced a True season high. NCIS won top drama in finale week, with its 8/7c slot grading a bit tougher than that of Criminal Minds (the top drama raw rating). Usual suspects Agents of SHIELD, The Blacklist and The Millers were the new shows on the list in the final week.

Rank	Name	True	A18-49	ARank
1	The Big Bang Theory	6.06	4.9	1
2	Billboard Music Awards	3.86	3.5	2
3	Modern Family	3.84	3.2	3
4	The Voice Tue	3.32	2.6	6
5	NCIS	3.32	2.6	6
6	The Voice Mon	3.16	3.0	4
7	Grey's Anatomy	3.12	2.6	6
8	Survivor	3.09	2.6	6
9	Criminal Minds	3.00	2.7	5
10	Shark Tank	2.64	1.7	25
11	Agents of SHIELD	2.58	2.0	16
12	American Idol Wed	2.53	2.1	14
13	Dancing with the Stars	2.47	2.3	12
14	NCIS: Los Angeles	2.46	2.5	11
15	The Blacklist	2.43	2.6	6
16	American Idol Thu	2.38	2.0	16
17	The Millers	2.36	2.3	12
18	The Middle	2.34	1.9	21
19	Barbara Walters: Her Story	2.29	1.6	29
20	Hell's Kitchen	2.26	1.7	25
21	Mike and Molly	2.24	2.0	16
22	Chicago Fire	2.16	1.9	21
23	Family Guy	2.14	2.0	16
24	24: Live Another Day	2.13	2.0	16
25	The Amazing Race	2.12	1.8	24

Missing the True Top 25 but in the A18-49 list: Castle (t-#14 in A18-49, #26 in True), Person of Interest (t-#21 in A18-49, #30 in True), Bones (t-#25 in A18-49, #33 in True) and Two and a Half Men (R) (t-#25 in A18-49, #38 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.