The reboot of the Roseanne Barr Show was celebrated by the media for drawing 25 million viewers on its debut episode. The 10 million total viewers gleaned from its Tuesday showing is indicative of a 23 percent drop in overall viewership and a 26 percent drop in a key demographic for the ABC comedy. This resulted in a 2.5 Nielsen ratings drop.
This dip, which occurred following a one week break for the show, isn’t easily explained. However, whether anecdotal or not, Roseanne Barr was recently applauded by the President Donald Trump.
Los Angeles and New York City turned in the lowest ratings for a geographic area for the show and are the two top media markets in the country. Barr took to Twitter to address the matter but immediately took the tweet down.
“New York and LA-had the lowest ratings for a gender fluid child character & a Hillary supporting sister character,” Barr wrote in a now-deleted tweet, while also adding a hashtag of her own name.
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Though Americans are not the inventors of mass communication, the country has certainly been more influential in propagating the use and growth of all modern mediums of mass communications than any other society in history, either directly or inadvertently.
According to reports, neither city landed in the top 20 individual city ratings for the series revival’s debut. The top city in the show’s ratings was Tulsa, Oklahoma, followed by Cincinnati, Ohio and Kansas City, Missouri. It doesn’t take a futuristic supercomputer to figure out why, but a direct cosign by a polarizing president could have definitely caused that dip.
Meanwhile Black-ish, the show that Roseanne’s reboot was allowed to shamelessly slander, is holding on. Black-ish, while not getting quite the same ratings it once was able to muster, brought in 4.2 million viewers with a 1.2 Nielsen rating.
Channing Dungey, the president of ABC Entertainment, said, “Were thrilled that America has welcomed the Conner family back into their homes. The show is as fresh and relevant today as it was when it left the air 21 years ago. We cant wait to see what the Roseanne team has in store for next year.”
