Viewers flock to Roseanne reboot

More than two decades after its original finale, a massive audience welcomed Roseanne back to ABC on Tuesday night. The network reported that the two-episode premiere attracted a whopping 18.2 million viewers, ABC’s best results for an hour-long telecast since fall 2006.

With a 5.1 rating among adults 18-49, it was also the highestrated sitcom episode that broadcast television has seen since CBS ratings giant The Big Bang Theory scored a 5.5 with its eighth season opener in September 2014. The Roseanne premiere also topped the 16.6 million viewers recorded for the show’s original finale.

CNN reported that the only scripted series to have a larger audience this season was This Is Us, which drew 26.9 million viewers for its post-Super Bowl episode.

Roseanne Barr thanked fans via Twitter for the incredible rating: “You are all wonderful-here is to making America laugh & talk again! LOVE U”

If that sounds a little like Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan, that could be on purpose.

Much of the chatter leading up to the Roseanne premiere surrounded the lead actress’ politics, as Barr is a known Trump supporter, as is her character on the reboot. Both critics and viewers praised the show for honestly portraying a working-class family during its original run, and Barr said during the Television Critics Associations press tour that she believes “it was working-class people who elected Trump.”

Conservatives on Twitter rallied behind the reboot, both during the premiere and the morning after.

Dan Scavino Jr., the White House’s social media director, pointed out that #Roseanne was trending Tuesday night and congratulated the cast.

In reference to the Roseanne reboot, ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey said during the Banff World Media Festival last summer that the network aims to produce shows that appeal to broad audiences.

Barr openly spoke about her own life when the show originally aired, Dungey said, and “it’s a perfect time to have that voice back to talk about the realities now.”

“What the election revealed was that there’s parts of our country that didn’t feel heard, that they didn’t have a voice,” Dungey added, according to the Hollywood Reporter. “When you look at how the polling data went in the run-up to the election, it was kind of a big surprise to many people that the election turned out as it did.”