The election of Donald Trump has had a major impact on late night television, with the more political Stephen Colbert moving ahead of The Tonight Show, which had previously dominated the time slot regardless of host. Saturday Night Live, along with other late night shows, have also benefited. Now this might extend into prime time with the return of Rosanne for an eight episode run. The Hollywood Reporter says ABC’s ‘Roseanne’ to Tackle Trump Era in Sitcom Revival:
Expect comedian Roseanne Barr to tackle Donald Trump and the current reality of ordinary Americans when a revival of her popular family sitcom debuts on ABC mid-season.
ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey just isn’t certain Barr will personally identify the U.S. president. “I don’t know whether Roseanne (Barr) will speak about Trump by name. But she’s going to speak very honestly,” Dungey told the Banff World Media Festival on Monday during a keynote address.
“We’re going to be tackling some of the topics that are in the conversation today. I’ll leave it that,” she added. Original castmembers Roseanne Barr, John Goodman, Sara Gilbert, Laurie Metcalf, Michael Fishman and Lecy Goranson will return 30 years after the original Roseanne comedy debuted, this time with new kids and grandchildren thrown into the mix for new story-telling.
The show will now have an additional generation, but as the story goes on it sounds like not everyone in the family, or at least on the show, will have the same political ideas:
“Now we will have three generations — Roseanne, her kids and her kids have kids who are teenagers. So we’ll bring back a point-of-view that has really been missing on the air,” Dungey said. By that, the ABC Entertainment boss is talking about a push by her network to deliver TV shows that speak to U.S. audiences as a whole, including those that elected Donald Trump as the U.S. president, and not just to the coasts…
Dungey said ABC as a broadcaster by nature tries to appeal to a broad audience, but that need has never been more acute than after the recent U.S. election. “What the election revealed was that there’s parts of our country that didn’t feel heard, that they didn’t have a voice. When you look at how the polling data went in the run-up to the election, it was kind of big surprise to many people that the election turned out as it did,” she recalled.
If this does well, we might see more politically oriented shows in prime time.
Update/Correction: Posting quickly while traveling has its hazards. In this case I posted when I had time, and didn’t go back until later to review Rosanne’s previous comments on Trump to find that she has been defending him. She is not someone I have ever paid much attention to,but from reading more on her recent political comments it sounds increasingly like the show could have a pro-Trump view. Hopefully it will at least present both sides.