Roseanne And The $2 Million a Character Tweet

A, somewhat belated, thought:

Perhaps if the price of a single repulsive tweet is now somewhere north of $100 million the good old US of A can be said to have licked this racism thing soon?

We have a show, rated as the top primetime scripted TV show, complete with an extensive back catalogue of episodes all primed to soar again.

It had the best demo number for any sitcom since 2014.

It was even reported to be breaking Nielsen ratings record for most on demand viewers ever.

ABC were cheering. The number of viewers measured was twice what they had projected. A second season was ordered post haste. Greenlighting this would likely be the most profitable move this year. No way this baby wasn’t going to bring in a 100+ million.

Except…. We are, of course, talking about Roseanne. Starring Roseanne.

In just 54 characters said Roseanne brought this all crashing down. That is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a cheap tweet. Just about 2 mil per character. Ouch.

It is, in fact, even worse than how it first appears. Since the infamous tweet first surfaced most other rights holders, Hulu included, have responded by promising to drop the show altogether.
These networks and streaming services certainly did not get a former #1 rated show for free. So instead of gaining views (and money) they have now lost their entire investment in it.

I am frequently told of how racist, evil and greedy the capitalists in the great western superpower are. I am starting to have some doubts.

If both ABC, Hulu and a whole host of minor broadcasters are prepared to give up a metric f**ktonne* of money just to avoid looking a bit bad by association this just might be up for debate.

* Editors Note: Sincere apologies for the use of language in this article.
As we are talking about Americans we should, obviously, have used a more appropriate term: imperial f**kton – or even the 2,000lb short f**kton