‘Roseanne’ ratings a win ‘for all broadcast TV’ — ABC boss
LOS ANGELES: ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey has described the triumphant return of the ‘Roseanne’ show as a win for all of broadcast TV.
The heavily hyped ‘Roseanne’ revival — after a 20-year hiatus — launched with back-toback episodes that attracted a whopping 18.1 million total viewers and an impressive 5.1 rating in the advertiser- coveted adults 18- 49 demographic.
In total viewers, that represents the highest-rated scripted show in the past few seasons — since peak Empire — as well as the highest-rated sitcom broadcast in more than three years. What’s more, the viewership was higher than ‘Roseanne’s May 1997 (former) series fi nale.
A deeper dive into the ratings reveal that the comedy about the working- class Conner family overperformed in Middle America. That helps support Dungey’s December 2016 comments that ABC hadn’t paid enough attention to some of the “true realities of what life is like for everyday Americans” in its programming.
Said an upbeat Dungey with a laugh: “We were joking around this morning, “Welcome back to 1988, in terms of the programme and the ratings!”
As to whether it was nostalgia or politics, Dungey reckoned: “It was a combination of both. When you have a show that was as beloved as ‘ Roseanne’ was during its run, the Conner family was a family that audiences were really anxious to reconnect with after all this time and see how they’re doing. It’s like welcoming old friends back. There certainly was a big part of that from nostalgia end of it. We were hopeful about this going in and it has borne out, given the current political climate, there’s a hunger for this kind of conversation.”
On whether there was a strategy to keep the Middle America audience was engaged, Dungey said: “We are always, as a broadcast network, looking to market to all of America. We had great marketing stunt we did with Nascar — which is not necessarily normally the audience that we go after — that worked very well with this show. We got the word out with subway station takeovers in many cities, we had bus bench takeovers, the iconic couch was everywhere, we were all over South by Southwest. We wanted to remind everybody about the show using iconic things like the afghan and the couch, and we really tried to be in most of the major markets where the show did well 30 years ago.”
On the possibility of announcing a second season, Dungey said: “We are excited about the possibility and the opportunity. We’re not ready to pull the trigger in this very moment on this call, but hopefully we’ll have some news soon.”