Here's How Much Roseanne Barr Stands to Lose
Roseanne Barr has made a career out of pushing buttons, but the comedian has stepped too far over the line this time with a racist tweet that has already had serious consequences not just for the star, but also ABC.
Just three months after the reboot of her eponymous show became a ratings smash for the network, Roseanne has been cancelled following a now-deleted tweet by the star early Tuesday that read "Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj." The tweet was in reference to Valerie Jarrett, a top former aide to President Obama, was is black.
The consequences for Barr were swift. ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey denounced the star's words and announced that they network would no longer be a platform for the show.
From Channing Dungey, President of ABC Entertainment: "Roseanne's Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show."
There was only one thing to do here, and that was the right thing.- Robert Iger (@RobertIger) May 29, 2018
In addition, Barr's talent management agency, ICM Partners, dropped her as a client. Barr herself has issued an apology and announced that she will be leaving twitter.
Though the salary contracts for the show's second season had not yet been announced, Barr reportedly received $250,000 per episode for each of the first season's nine episodes, earning a a total of $2.25 million. With ratings showing good returns it seems likely that that number could have grown considerably in the now-cancelled second outing.
Of course, the revived show wasn't Barr's only source of income. The original sitcom, which aired from 1988 to 1997, was a major hit, and Barr reportedly made $21 million for the sitcom's last season. Syndication for the show's 220 episode run was stately as well; according to reporting by Variety at the time, the show earned $1 million per syndicated episode in 1993. In the more than 20 years since the show ended, Barr and other contributors have continued to earn royalties from those episodes, with a significant portion going to Barr herself as a star and creator.
In addition to her sitcom, Barr also headlined a talk show from 1998 to 2000, for which she earned the title of second highest-paid woman in show business, directly behind Oprah Winfrey. Barr also authored several books in the ensuing years, including Stand Up!, Roseanne, My Life as a Woman, Roseannearchy: Dispatches from the Nut Farm. This, in addition to her TV and film work, boosted her to a net worth of $42 million by 2011 according to documents filed by her ex-husband.
Barr has kept busy in the years since with guest-starring roles on shows like Portlandia and The Office, a short-lived reality show about her life on her Hawaiian macadamia nut farm titled Roseanne's Nuts, as well as serving as a judge on Last Comic Standing for a year. All of this, combined with the continuing royalties from Roseanne and the success of the new season, has given Barr an estimated net worth of $80 million.
Naturally, Barr's bank account won't be the only one taking a hit from this latest debacle. Though the show did experience an audience dropoff following the premiere, the season still averaged close to 10 million viewers per episode, strong enough to make it one of the top comedies on network television.
At a time when ABC is struggling to compete with the offerings of streaming services like Netflix and with some of their mainstay programming like Modern Family beginning to lose viewership, there's no doubt that the network was counting on the boost of Barr's show to elevate its roster. Indeed, Barr held a prominent place in their Upfront presentations earlier this month, where networks show off their upcoming seasons to ad buyers.
“If anyone came to play a drinking game for the number of times we mention Roseanne, you're welcome.” ABC-TV executive Ben Sherwood joked at the time.
Exactly how much the network stands to lose in the ordeal is not yet clear.
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