Bruce Jenner’s interview with Diane Sawyer — during which the former Olympian discussed his transition from man to woman — was a ratings blockbuster for ABC on Friday night, ranking as the night’s top-rated program and pushing “20/20” to a 15-year high.
The interview, airing from 9 to 11 p.m., scored a remarkable 5.2 rating/17 share in the 18-49 demographic most important to advertisers, and a 6.4/18 in the key news demo. Those numbers represent the best performance for “20/20” since March 17, 2000.
The interview also drew 16.9 million total viewers.
Week-to-week, “20/20” shot up triple digits.
Overall for the night, the network — which also aired “Shark Tank” at 8 p.m. — scored a 4.0/14 in the 18-49 demo, beating the other networks combined for the night by 21 percent. The network averaged 13.8 million total viewers, handily besting second-place CBS by 73 percent.
On the social media front, the Jenner interview also dominated the night, drawing 972,000 tweets from 403,000 unique authors.