Jeremy Renner Interview With Diane Sawyer Gives ABC Thursday Ratings Boost

April 11, 2023

Jeremy Renner‘s interview with Diane Sawyer gave ABC a bit of a ratings boost on Thursday night.

Jeremy Renner: The Diane Sawyer Interview – A Story of Terror, Survival and Triumph aired at 10 p.m. ET/PT, averaging 3.49M live + same day total viewers. According to ABC, that’s the broadcaster’s best Thursday performance in six months, since the premiere of the Hilary Swank drama Alaska Daily.

Alaska Daily managed about 3.58M viewers for its October 6 premiere. The season, which ended on March 30, averaged about 2.8M viewers. Compared to last week, the Jeremy Renner special drew about 800,000 more viewers.

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Renner’s special underperformed compared to Sawyer’s previous tell-all interview with Matthew Perry in October, which drew about 4.15M viewers.

It’s also worth noting that the final hour of primetime on Thursdays has a healthy lead-in from Station 19 and Grey’s Anatomy. The Jeremy Renner interview managed to draw about 100,000 more viewers than Grey’s, but Station 19 won the night with about 3.6M viewers.

About 790,000 of the viewers for Renner’s special were among the ad friendly news demographic, which is 25-54. The network says that’s its best non-sports Thursday ratings in nearly two years, since May 6, 2021.

Since the special was billed as an ABC News interview, the network measured its ratings success based on the news demo, rather than the usual 18-49 entertainment programming demo. Among 18-49 year-olds, the special got a 0.37 rating.

During the special, Renner discussed the Jan. 1 snowplow accident that broke more than 30 bones in his body and left him in critical condition, as well as his months-long recovery process.