Diane Sawyer’s Bruce Jenner Interview Scores Huge Ratings for ABC

ABC’s two-hour special edition of 20/20 featuring Diane Sawyer’s interview with Bruce Jenner scored big numbers for ABC. Bruce Jenner: The Interview averaged 16.9 million viewers and a 5.2 rating among adults 18-49.

That’s around 10 million more viewers than usually watch ABC on a Friday night. The special also scored high marks with adults 25-54 (6.4 rating) and adults 18-34 (4.2 rating).

Bruce Jenner: The Interview, which earned high praise from critics, was TV’s biggest Friday non-sports broadcast since 2003 in viewers and young adults, according to ABC. It was also the top-rated broadcast in adults 25-54 since 2005.

This marked 20/20’s top ratings on a Friday with viewers, adults 18-49 and adults 25-54 in 15 years, since March 17, 2000 (featuring an interview with JonBenet Ramsey’s parents).

The interview did particularly well with women 25-54, where it posted an 8.6 rating — dwarfing anything else on the broadcast networks Friday night.

As a result, ABC easily won the night among adults 18-49 with a 4.0 rating — beating the combined averages of CBS (1.1), NBC (0.9), Fox (0.9) and The CW (0.4).

In social media, ABC says Bruce Jenner: The Interview drew 972,000 tweets from 403,000 unique users, making it “the most social Friday telecast of all time excluding sporting events.”

TV Tattle has a roundup of the interview’s highlights. “For all intents and purposes, I am a woman,” the Olympian said at the beginning of Diane Sawyer’s two-hour special that announced Jenner is transgender. Jenner told Sawyer that “this is not a publicity stunt” and confirmed that E! will document Jenner’s transition through eight hour-long episodes.

From TV Guide Magazine

How 'Countdown' Recruited Jensen Ackles to Go Full 'Die Hard'

Countdown boss Derek Haas talks creating the character around Ackles, and the cast teases the “Avengers”-like team of the crime thriller. Read the story now on TV Insider.