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.
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%).
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.
(source; ABC)
