‘Roseanne’ Cancellation Haunts ABC In Ill-Timed ‘Emmy’ Magazine Print Feature
June 6, 2018‘Roseanne’ Cancellation Haunts ABC In Ill-Timed ‘Emmy’ Magazine Print Feature
Roseanne may have been canceled by ABC just over a week ago after its star let loose online with racist tweets, but this week TV Academy members are receiving magazines in the mail that are playing catch up with the still smoldering fiasco.
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“Shortly before this issue was to be mailed, ABC canceled Roseanne,” says a note from the TV Academy that was included with the latest copy of Emmy Magazine. “This issue includes a brief reference to the show in a profile of ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey (page 120) without this additional context,” the correspondence torpidly adds. “The digital version of the magazine has been updated to include this new information.”
With a one-page New York Times quoting ad for Roseanne’s now abandoned FYC campaign also in the glossy publication, “brief reference” is a bit of an evasion of what is actually said in the four-page ingratiating Dungey piece. Examining how last fall was the debut of first full slate for the February 2016 appointed Dungey, the Emmy article says “Roseanne‘s comeback reached stratospheric territory.”
The pre-cancellation copy goes on for two more paragraphs of Roseanne revival love-in that resembles what Disney-ABC Television Group President Ben Sherwood said at their May 15 upfront presentation where “a woman who has always done it her way” Barr was the marquee attraction:
With 18.1 million viewers, the premiere was the highest-rated sitcom broadcast in more than three years, outperforming Roseanne’s original 1997 series finale. The lead character — played by Roseanne Barr — was a Trump supporter who fights with her pussy-hat-wearing sister, and ABC was proud to take on these tough issues and depict the nation’s political diversity.
“What’s happening for so many of us is that we have relatives and friends in different parts of the country who voted different ways,” Dungey said before the reboot debuted in March. “I like the fact that we’re representing different points of view. We’ve had a lot of conversations in the wake of the 2016 elections about the people in this country who don’t feel like their voices are being heard.”
Parts of the long controversial Roseanne’s voice was certainly heard in her tweets of the early morning of May 29 where she tagged former Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett as an offspring of “Muslim Brotherhood & Planet of the Apes.”
In response, the online version of the Emmy mag story notes that Dungey “did not hesitate to cancel the show” and adds her quote of last week calling the racist tirade “abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values” The edit also drops the sentence that “the political diversity captured in the new Roseanne mirrors an overall emphasis on inclusion at ABC that’s reflected in family comedies black-ish, Speechless and Fresh Off the Boat, and dramas such as The Good Doctor.” Bleaching out any mention of Roseanne and the scope of the political spectrum, that line now reads that “the network’s emphasis on inclusion is reflected in family comedies black-ish, Speechless and Fresh Off the Boat, and dramas such as The Good Doctor.”
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Contacted by Deadline, Emmy Magazine had no comment on the SNAFU and passed the matter on to their PR team, who did not respond in a timely fashion.
Despite an apology, a short-lived exit from Twitter, pleas of alternating forgiveness and anger plus the cancellation of the latest revival of her 1988 to 1998 Emmy winning sitcom, Barr is still making herself heard online. In that vein, as other cast members and producers try to salvage a version of the show without her, Barr is also still seemingly attacking Jarrett anew with retweets to her 881,000 followers like:
You didn’t cause any pain. Those people always hated you. Valerie Jarrett wants Israelis and Jews chased into the sea, and she’ll celebrate.
— Ghost of Bull Moose (@BullMooseGhost) June 5, 2018
That can be deleted, but never edited out.