ABC's move to ax 'Roseanne' reflects businesses are often at front lines of culture wars

Show Caption Hide Caption ABC cancels 'Roseanne' hours after Roseanne Barr's racist tweet

Even by the standards of recent quick corporate reactions to scandal, ABC's fast action to cancel Roseanne Barr's TV show may signal a watershed moment in the culture wars.

Less than 12 hours after Barr's racist tweet about former Obama administration official Valerie Jarrett, the network shut down Roseanne, a popular reboot featuring a pro-Trump star that allowed ABC to deflect criticism that it showcased only liberal fare.

That decision — lauded by Barr's critics and blasted by her fans — speaks to a fraught new corporate era in which companies have been pushed to the front lines of the nation's contentious cultural debates. In this battleground, swift responses often are seen as the only way to contain a social media firestorm.



“You’re looking at a very 21st-century challenge,” says Jay Tucker, executive director at the Center for Media, Entertainment & Sports at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. “In an earlier (TV) era, it would have taken half a season to make that decision after much internal analysis."

ABC had consciously courted controversy with the return of a prime-time sitcom whose star has a track record of offensive statements and whose subject — the namesake is a white, working-class supporter of the president who's often in conflict with her family members over issues such as immigration — was determined to be political from the start.

But ABC's defense of the show disappeared after Barr's since-deleted tweet about Jarrett, on the same day that Starbucks shuttered its shops to hold anti-bias training on the heels of its own crisis over racial profiling. One of the nation's most combustible issues, race is a third rail for major corporations, which must appeal to a diverse array of customers.

ABC’s Channing Dungey, the first African American to head programming at a major broadcast network, canceled a breakout hit that had boosted the network’s ratings, attracting an average of 23 million viewers.

In taking action, Dungey may have avoided an ugly backlash against the network.

“If you continue to air episodes of Roseanne Barr’s show, after her hateful, racist attacks, Twitter users will call for the biggest social media boycott we have ever seen,” Ed Krassenstein, an entrepreneur, writer and self-described opponent of President Trump, tweeted with the hashtag #SuspendRoseanneNow.

But the network now faces a backlash from other quarters. Many of the comedian's fans blame the show's cancellation on political correctness and are threatening a boycott of their own.

“The 30+ million viewers who watched Roseanne should boycott the network. Hit them where it hurts. We aren’t going to accept the liberal bias while this network still employs people who have personally attacked our President and this administration,” tweeted Ryan Fournier, head of a student coalition supporting Trump and president of a conservative political strategy firm, using the hashtag #BoycottABC.

And on Wednesday, the president amplified the outcry by weighing in personally. In March, Trump had called Barr to congratulate her on the show's premiere.

"Bob Iger of ABC called Valerie Jarrett to let her know that 'ABC does not tolerate comments like those' made by Roseanne Barr," Trump tweeted. "Gee, he never called President Donald J. Trump to apologize for the HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC. Maybe I just didn’t get the call?"

Starbucks, Netflix, Dove

While ABC’s nearly instant decision to pull the plug on Roseanne stands out for its speed, the network is far from alone in facing fast-paced corporate decisions in the wake of brewing crises.

After two African-American men were led out of a Philadelphia Starbucks in handcuffs last month because they refused to make a purchase, the company's CEO apologized to them two days later. Calls for a boycott already had begun to spread on social media.

Mishandling of race in advertising or customer interactions prompted Dove, H&M and Old Navy, among others, to apologize in the past year.

Companies have quickly moved to cool viewer outrage over other social issues, too. In November, Netflix fired Kevin Spacey, star of its hit show House of Cards, four days after allegations of sexual harassment surfaced against the actor.

And last summer, Google engineer James Damore was fired by the tech giant two days after a memo he wrote was leaked and went viral in which he argued that gender differences could explain why most of Google's engineers and leaders are men.

Corporations are making quick calls to avoid permanent damage in a social media age in which angry tweets and Facebook posts can quickly go viral, says Columbia Business School professor William Klepper.



"People have been around this circuit too many times," Klepper says. "Now it's an issue of: State your values. State what you stand for. Hold to your code of ethics. But if you delay, try to explain away or, worse yet, you try to defend, it's a lose-lose today."

ABC's Dungey initially had counted on Barr's show to serve as a cultural counterpoint to a lineup that includes shows pointedly focused on non-white families, including Black-ish and Fresh Off the Boat.

Dungey had made comments in the past defending the network's support of Roseanne and was integral to a decision to scuttle an episode of Black-ish that tackled the debate over NFL players opting to kneel in protest during the national anthem.

But Barr's personal comments on Twitter, for which she apologized as a "bad joke," seemed a bridge too far for ABC. Dungey condemned Barr’s tweet comparing Jarrett to a love child of the Muslim Brotherhood and Planet of the Apes as "abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show."



Bob Iger, CEO of the Walt Disney Co., which owns ABC, said on Twitter: "There was only one thing to do here, and that was the right thing."

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More: Readers sound off: Roseanne Barr's tweet has consequences



In some ways, ABC's gamble to back the return of Roseanne was a corporate attempt to "ride the zeitgeist,” says Boston College political science professor David A. Hopkins. "And they discovered that can mean courting disaster if you are not really careful."



But one media observer believes the speed with which Roseanne was canceled suggests Dungey perhaps already had a plan in place should the star step too far out of bounds.



"Roseanne has always been a bit of a firecracker, with extreme views on race," says Nsenga Burton, an expert on race and politics and chair of mass media at Clark Atlanta University.

"We all have a right to say what we want to say," she says. "But what companies are learning is that you can stand for freedom of expression, but not necessarily consequence-free freedom of expression."

And had ABC not canceled the show, what then?

Color of Change executive director Rashad Robinson says his organization would have pushed advertisers on the show to reconsider how they spend their ad dollars.

"Advertisers would not have been able to hide from a simple question: 'Are you going to put your corporate brand next to people who say things like this, and are likely to say things like this again and again?' " Robinson says.

"There's more than enough TV out there these days, on television and online," he says. "There are options."

Media companies such as Fox News and YouTube have faced advertising boycotts over the last year after brands balked at showing their ads next to controversial content.

But these flare-ups also have betrayed how treacherous responding to social media outrage can be. Coffee maker Keurig said it would remove its advertising from high-rated Hannity after comments from show host Sean Hannity that then-Senate candidate Roy Moore — accused of sexual misconduct with teen girls — should be given the benefit of the doubt. Hannity fans responded with their own #KeurigBoycott featuring fans destroying their coffee machines. The CEO then told employees the company didn't mean to appear as if it was "taking sides."

Though companies are more on alert than ever for social media outrage, UCLA's Tucker says, it may well be a while before a storm identical to Roseanne brews.

"The simple truth is, people don't usual write about other people in the way that Roseanne just did," he says. "This is a very unusual situation. And as much as ABC supported the show, a person had to be held accountable."