ABC's 20/20 With Diane Sawyer's Gabrielle Gifford Interview Scores Big Ratings

With Dancing and A Special Edition of 20/20 featuring Diane Sawyer's exclusive interview with Gabrielle Giffords, ABC finished as Monday's most-watched television network, topping CBS by a season-best 4.8 million viewers (HIMYM/2 Broke Girls/Two and a Half Men/Mike & Molly/Hawaii Five-0), Fox by 9.9 million viewers (Terra Nova/House) and NBC by 12.1 million viewers (The Sing Off/Rock Center with Brian Williams). ABC qualified as Monday's #1 network in Total Viewers for the 9th time in as many weeks this season. In addition among Adults 18-49, ABC continued to beat out Fox by a strong margin on Monday (+33%) and once again to more than double NBC's young adult delivery on the night (+129%).

· Growing for the 2nd week in a row, ABC drew best-since-premiere numbers with Total Viewers and Adults 18-49 (tie) - since 9/19/11. In addition, the Net was up over the year-ago Monday by 1.5 million viewers.

Please Note: ABC was pre-empted in Milwaukee and Green Bay (DMAs #34 and #69 - accounting for just over 1% of US coverage) for local coverage of ESPN's Monday Night Football game (Packers-Vikings), so the Fast Affiliate numbers are subject to change once the National ratings are issued this afternoon.

Gaining audience from its first to second hour, the semifinals of Dancing with the Stars made ABC the most-watched network in its time period for the 9th week running. ABC's broad-skewing dance performance show, registered as the #2 broadcast program its time slot across all key Adult demos (AD18-34/AD18-49/AD25-54), while running #1 with Women 25-54 and Kids 2-11. ABC's Dancing qualified as Monday's most-watched TV show overall for its 6th straight telecast.

· Rising for the 2nd week in a row, DWTS drew its biggest audience since its season premiere broadcast 8 weeks ago (on 9/19/11).

In the 10 o'clock hour, A Special Edition of 20/20 with Diane Sawyer qualified as the most-watched TV show overall and ranked #1 across all key Women demos (W18-34/W18-49/W25-54). 20/20 featured Diane Sawyer's exclusive first interview with Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. ABC's 20/20 crushed NBC's competing Rock Center with Brian Williams in the hour, nearly tripling the NBC newsmagazine in Total Viewers (+198%) and more than doubling its Adult 18-49 delivery (+115%). Rock Center featured Bob Costas' exclusive interview with former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky.

· In Total Viewers and key Adults (AD18-49/AD25-54), the special edition of 20/20 stood as ABC's biggest newsmagazine telecast in over 4 months - since 7/10/11 with Diane Sawyer's exclusive Jaycee Dugard interview. Versus Diane Sawyer's recent ABC News Special - Jacqueline Kennedy: In Her Own Words in September, the Gabrielle Giffords interview was up by wide margins in Total Viewers (+60%), Adults 18-49 (+87%) and Adults 25-54 (+86%).

 

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