It happened to "The Cosby Show" after the 2014 revelations about Bill Cosby drugging women and assaulting them. It happened to repeats of "7th Heaven" after lead actor Stephen Collins confessed to sexual abuse of underage girls. And now "Roseanne" reruns are disappearing from the airwaves after Roseanne Barr's racist tweet comparing Valerie Jarrett, a black female adviser to former President Barack Obama, to an ape.
Disney, which canceled the revamped version of the show Tuesday hours after the tweet, quickly scrubbed the show from its ABC website. Viacom reportedly pulled 'Roseanne' reruns from CMT, TV Land and Paramount Network. Hulu soon followed suit in terms of repeats from the 1990s. Plus, the Atlanta-based Laff network dropped the original run of "Roseanne" from its schedule. Laff airs many sitcoms from the past 35 years including "The Drew Carey Show," "That '70s Show," "Spin City," "Grace Under Fire" and "Night Court."
"While we believe viewers have always distinguished the personal behavior of the actress Roseanne Barr from the television character Roseanne Connor, we are disgusted by Barr's comments this week," Laff said in a statement. "Therefore, we are removing the original 'Roseanne' series from the Laff schedule for the time being, effective immediately."
But “Roseanne” repeats may come back at some point based on what happened to both “The Cosby Show” and “7th Heaven,” the wholesome drama about a preacher’s family.
In late 2016, Atlanta-based Bounce TV brought back "The Cosby Show" based on popular demand after pulling it in 2014 when dozens of women publicly announced they were attacked by Cosby. But then Bounce dropped "Cosby" again last month after Cosby was found guilty on three counts of aggravated indecent assault against Andrea Constand.
Atlanta-based Up TV yanked "7th Heaven" repeats in 2014 following Collins' child-molestation confession but six months later brought it back.
Up general manager Amy Winter said at the time: “We also did some research and found that everybody was like, ‘You know what? This is a great family show. It shouldn’t suffer. I would like to watch it. I’d like to watch it with my family. I can get over it.’ And that actually resonated.”
The show continued to air on Up for a while but is currently not on the schedule. "7th Heaven" is available now on Hulu streaming services.
