Friday’s special installment of ABC’s “20/20,” featuring Diane Sawyer’s highly anticipated interview with Bruce Jenner about his gender transition, delivered 16.9 million viewers, the largest audience for the program in 15 years, the network announced.

ABC reported that the two-hour show, which aired from 9-11 p.m., delivered a 5.2 average rating / 17 share in the key demo of adults 18-49, with strong numbers in adults 18-34 (4.2/17) and adults 25-54 (6.4/18).

“’20/20′ shot up by triple digits week to week to new season highs and the newsmagazine’s strongest numbers on the night in over 15 years among viewers and key adults (AD18-49/AD25-54) since 3/17/00,” ABC reported.

The network adds: “Diane Sawyer’s exclusive interview with Bruce Jenner turned in TV’s biggest Friday non-sports broadcast since 2003 in viewers and young adults and since 2005 in the key news demo — since 3/14/03, 4/18/03 and 1/28/05, respectively.”

The program also became “the most social Friday telecast of all time excluding sporting events,” ABC reported, with the show drawing 972,000 tweets from 403,000 unique authors, according to Nielsen Social.