What a season it's been. While the entertainment on Television has been fun and questions have been raised about the ratings, everyone running online sites has experienced great results. Yesterday, Idolblog.com had over 55,000 visitors with 20,745 of them coming to the site in the hour after the show aired in the East. This is dramatically up on last year so whatever the commentators may say about the future of American Idol, from an online perspective there is plenty of interest.

Enough of that though, join me for the live recap.

Tonight's Live Finale is coming from the Nokia Theatre. More than 97.5 million votes were cast last night, smashing the previous record by 23 million. Apparently the split was 56%-44%. Based on that figure and all the polls online which are all pointing towards David Cook, it will be a huge surprise if it's the other way around. Despite the fact that Paula Abdul, Randy Jackson and Simon Cowell were all swinging towards an Archuleta win last night.

The Top 12 kick off the show with a performance of Get Ready

David Cook and David Archuleta perform a duet of Hero

Syesha performs Waiting For You and is joined on stage for a duet by Seal.

Jason Castro then comes out to perform one of his moments from the show - Hallelujah. No Jeff Buckley though.

The Top 6 Girls then perform amedley of songs from Donna Summer. How HOT is Kristy Lee Cook?! Donna Summer then joins them onstage and the girls provide BV's for her new single Stamp Your Feet.

Michael Johns and Carly Smithson perform a duet together and sing The Letter

The Top 6 guys perform Summer of '69. The two Davids then perform another Bryan Adams number, Heaven. The man himself then joins them on stage to sing a few more of his songs

David Cook performs Sharped Dressed Man with ZZ Top.

The Jonas Brothers perform S.O.S

One Republic perform their hit Apologize and David Archuleta joins them for the second verse.

Last year's American Idol Winner Jordin Sparks performs One Step At a Time.

Carrie Underwood sings Last Name from her new album Carnival Ride.

Ryan Seacrest introduces the Top 12 for the final time as they all perform Faith, Father Figure and finally the two Davids with Freedom. George Michael then joins the cast on stage and sings Praying for Time

Ryan takes the envelope and reads the result.

The winner of American Idol 2008 is: DAVID COOK