On the heels of ABC’s huge audience–nearly 15 million viewers–for Diane Sawyer‘s exclusive interview with kidnap victim Jaycee Dugard comes word the interview, which was previewed on Sawyer’s ABC World News, boosted ABC’s evening newscast into a first place finish ahead of NBC Nightly News. On Thursday night, World News beat Nightly by 106,000 total viewers (7.656 million vs. 7.550 million), and helped drive World News to its best weekly performance in six weeks.

ABC’s heavily-promoted exclusive interview with kidnap victim Jaycee Dugard was a hit with viewers, attracting an average audience of 14.8 million for the two-hour special Sunday night, according to an early report from Nielsen. The Diane Sawyer interview was Sunday night’s most-popular program, outperforming CBS, NBC and Fox combined in the 9-11 p.m. timeslot. The interview, the first time most Americans had ever heard Dugard speak, was clearly a tune-in event, with the special more than doubling ABC’s lead-in (164%).

In her first interview since the day in 1991 when she was kidnapped, Jaycee Dugard described a life in captivity to ABC’s Diane Sawyer–saying she endured years of abuse and the birth of two children the best way she knew how. “You just do what you have to do to survive.” Dugard, who’s written a book about her life, shared for the first time the details of her abduction–a disappearance that haunted her family and frustrated police (who we learn came very close at times to finding her).

Dugard says she was walking to school when a car rolled up, the driver’s window went down, and her entire life changed:

Diane Sawyer has aired the first clip from her exclusive interview with Jaycee Dugard, the California girl kidnapped while walking to school in June of 1991 and held for 18 years. Dugard, now 31, has written a book about her experience, and she tells her story in a two-hour special on ABC Sunday at 9 p.m. In a preview that aired on ABC World News, Dugard tells Sawyer how she gave birth to a daughter–when she was 14–in the backyard prison where she was held. “Very painful, but then I saw her,” Dugard says. “She was beautiful. I felt like I wasn’t alone anymore.”

Jaycee Dugard, who disappeared as an eleven-year-old girl and was held captive for 18 years, will give her first interview to ABC’s Diane Sawyer in a huge get that ABC is calling “a landmark television event.” Dugard, who was repeatedly abused by her captors and gave birth to two children, recently testified in the trial of Phillip and Nancy Garrido. The couple were convicted of abduction and abuse, with Phillip Dugard sentenced to 431 years to life in prison, and his wife Nancy sentenced to 36 years to life.

ABC will air exclusive Jaycee Dugard home videos tonight on 20/20 at 10pm, depicting her interacting with family for the first time since her reunion with them. A preview is on the new online page of ABC News: 20/20 anchor and ABC News Chief Law and Justice Correspondent Chris Cuomo‘s “Cuomo on the Case,” officially launches tonight and promises to become a staple in network news online content.

In our weekly recap of movement in the Power Grid, we run down all of the big shifts and their current event causes. This week, we weigh White House Correspondent Jake Tapper‘s facial hair, Sumner Redstone‘s financial woes and People magazine’s huge photo exclusive to see how they affected our leader board.

The politician who commemorated Barack Obama‘s election by pointedly asking if Obama was going to be an “Uncle Tom for the giant corporations” is at it again.

In an interview with Yahoo Finance’s Tech Ticker, Ralph Nader lashed out at the president on a variety of scores, calling him “a frightened man” and “Bush-Cheney redux” and mocking his Nobel Peace Prize win, saying the Nobel Committee must have been “eating too many sardines.”

When Mark Whicker heard the tragic story of Jaycee Dugard, who was kidnapped as a child and held captive for 18 years by a convicted sex criminal and religious loon, all he could think of was the sports milestones she missed. But instead of confining this crass, narrow-minded realization to a drunken card game conversation, he went and turned it into an entire sports column for the OC Register.

As the case moves into the national news dialogue, one of the most peculiar twists in the the disturbing story of the California kidnapper Phillip Garrido is the blog he kept, Voices Revealed, and the subsequent reaction to his story from the online community. What happens when a criminal makes his derranged musings public and upon his arrest, leaves a blog behind?

Headlines of late have been dominated by coverage of rowdy town hall meetings and Ted Kennedy coverage. However, yesterday’s horrific revelations that child kidnapper Philip Garrido had not only secretly been keeping Jaycee Dugard prisoner in his backyard for the last 18 years, but had also fathered two children with her, looks to be the story that will dominate headlines in the coming days.