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.

No. 2 on the list was USA Network’s WWE Monday Night Raw with 787, followed by NBC’s The Biggest Loser with 704.

The top ten TV programs of 2009:

1. American Idol (Wednesday), Fox; 2. American Idol (Tuesday), Fox; 3. Dancing with the Stars (Monday), ABC; 4. Sunday Night Football, NBC; 5. Dancing with the Stars (Tuesday); 6. NCIS: Los Angeles, CBS; 7. NCIS, CBS; 8. Monday Night Football, ESPN; 8. Sunday Night Football Pre-kickoff, NBC; 10. The Good Wife, CBS.

Late last week, Nielsen said it is selling Billboard music magazine and seven sister titles and discontinuing two others, including the journalism review Editor & Publisher.

Billboard, along with daily entertainment trade magazine The Hollywood Reporter and five smaller publications, will be acquired by a newly formed media investment group, e5 Global Media LLC.

The company is a joint venture of Pluribus Capital Management, a new private equity partner, and Guggenheim Partners, a financial services firm with more than $100 billion in assets under supervision, says Nielsen.