ABC says its decision to revive Roseanne and American Idol sprang out of Trump's victory

The New York Times

On the morning after Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton, ABC executives say they convened and came up with a new strategy. “We looked at each other and said, ‘There’s a lot about this country we need to learn a lot more about, here on the coasts,’” says Ben Sherwood, the Disney president who heads ABC's television group. That meeting led to the revival of Roseanne and American Idol, shows that could appeal to the Heartland viewer. “We went after it because that’s a show that, fundamentally, is about the American dream,” Sherwood says of Idol. “It’s about a girl with a cowboy hat and a boy with a banjo and people from small towns where music has saved their lives in different ways.” Adds Entertainment president Channing Dungey: "We had spent a lot of time looking for diverse voices in terms of people of color and people from different religions and even people with a different perspective on gender. But we had not been thinking nearly enough about economic diversity and some of the other cultural divisions within our own country. That’s been something we’ve been really looking at with eyes open since that time.” ALSO: The Roseanne-Trump narrative doesn't make sense because what would it mean if another classic sitcom like Seinfeld came back to massive ratings?