The Top Ten Most Watched Programs Of 2009

The Nielsen Company, a privately held global information and media company, released its annual list of top-rated TV series on Friday (the company also gauges television audiences).

Fox’s American Idol once again took the top-two positions while two new shows also made the list: CBS’s NCIS: Los Angeles at No. 6, and CBS’s The Good Wife at No. 10.

A cable-TV series also made the list — ESPN’s Monday Night Football, which tied for eighth place. Among single telecasts, all four Super Bowl programs topped the list. In fact, the only non-football telecast among the top ten was the Academy Awards telecast, which came in at No. 8. Somewhat surprisingly, the low-rated Jay Leno Show managed to top another one of the Nielsen year-end lists: “Top 10 programs with Product Placement Activity.” Nielsen counted 1,015 occurrences of product-placement ads on the NBC talk show.