Simon Cowell’s going-away party and the crowning of Lee DeWyze as the new “American Idol” brought more than 24 million viewers to Fox last week.

That was down nearly 5 million viewers from the audience for last year’s finale, the Nielsen Co. said Wednesday.

Cowell is leaving the show on which he was the defining character for a decade, although he will participate in a new game show with Fox in 2011.

The “Idol” conclusion and the increasingly popular “Glee” led Fox to win the week’s ratings race. The network averaged 9.7 million viewers in prime time (5.6, 10). CBS dropped to second with an 8 million average (5.1. 9), ABC had 6.4 million, NBC had 4.7 million (2.9, 5), and the CW and ION Television both had 1 million viewers (0.7, 1).

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision led with 3.3 million viewers (1.6, 3), Telemundo (0.6 rating, 1 share) and TeleFutura (0.5, 1) had 1 million each, Estrella had 200,000, and Azteca had 160,000 (both 0.1, 0).

NBC’s “Nightly News” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 7.6 million viewers (5.1, 11). ABC’s “World News” was second with 7 million (4.7, 10) and the “CBS Evening News” had 5.3 million viewers (3.6, 8).

A ratings point represents 1,149,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation’s estimated 114.9 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

For the week of June 24-30, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: “American Idol” (Wednesday), Fox, 24.22 million; “American Idol” (Tuesday), Fox, 20.07 million; “Dancing With the Stars,” ABC, 19.36 million; “Dancing With the Stars Results,” ABC, 18.4 million; “NCIS,” CBS, 16.3; “Two and a Half Men,” CBS, 15.46 million; “The Big Bang Theory,” CBS, 15.02 million; “NCIS: Los Angeles,” CBS, 13.23 million; “Criminal Minds,” CBS, 12.97 million; “CSI: Miami,” CBS, 12.38 million.

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ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co. CBS is owned by CBS Corp. CW is a joint venture of Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS Corp. Fox and My Network TV are units of News Corp. NBC and Telemundo are owned by General Electric Co. ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks. TeleFutura is a division of Univision. Azteca America is a wholly owned subsidiary of TV Azteca S.A. de C.V.

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Online:

http://www.nielsenmedia.com