Posted on 08/19/2003 8:38:35 PM PDT by new cruelty
NEW YORK - Two days, two cancellations for Roseanne Barr.
ABC said Tuesday it was pulling the plug on "The Real Roseanne Show" after two weeks, replacing the reality show with comedy reruns until the new season starts in September.
A day earlier, the ABC Family cable channel canceled "Domestic Goddess," Barr's cooking show that was to begin airing Sept. 20. Barr is scheduled to undergo a hysterectomy this week and production had barely begun.
Since ABC's "The Real Roseanne Show" was about her pitching the cooking show to various networks, its cancellation rendered the reality series pointless.
Its poor ratings didn't help, either.
"We're confident the audience would have grown, given time, but with ABC Family's decision to cancel `Domestic Goddess' due to Roseanne's illness, the show's dynamic shifted irrevocably," said executive producer R.J. Cutler. "We are very sorry that it didn't work out and we wish Roseanne the best and a speedy recovery."
Starting Wednesday, it will be replaced by reruns of "George Lopez" and "The Drew Carey Show," ABC said.
Lucille Ball was extremely popular for a very long time. It seems that some incarnation of Lucy was on television regularly from the mid-50's through the mid-70's. I remember they tried to do another show with Lucy after the success of The Golden Girls established an audience for comedies played by old ladies. ;-) I don't know what the problem was, but the show didn't go a whole season. Lucille seemed game to try but she had been away from television for many years.
It showed. The comedy was retro (not a bad call, but clearly done to death); she was often (to my ears) difficult to understand, so jokes fell flat, and she simply was not the sprightly comic we all grew up with.
A real shame. I doubt the sort of hubris that keeps Rosanne going was what brought Lucille Ball back to television. She didn't need the money, she was just willing to give it a shot.
More importantly, though, Lucille (to my knowledge) never had the personna of being mean in the limelight. She was a star, always wore smile, and surrounded herself with happy professionals. Rosanne is and has none of those things. If she's trying to remake herself as the New Queen of Nice, she needs to drop the smug, back-biting snarkiness that seems to go with being a comic these days. She has a looong way to go.
Nerves of steel-- the kind that showmen who once performed live needed to keep the checks coming.
...and I'm willing to be he'd had a little practice at more than a couple Hollyweird parties where some crazy lib thought to make a fool of him in front of the bigwigs. ;-)
Thanks, Ann.
There's so many fat lesbos on the Left it gets your head spinnin', don't it?
Yes, he was.
Just hoping his bravery didn't put him on the Hollywood blacklist.
She should go on "Nip and Tuck" and have that mole removed. Maybe she could get a funnybone implant too.
Yep, and the way they juggle production schedules for TV Rosanne would've been given much more time off than that. This is a convenient excuse for the network to dump her.
So, get your asbestos flak jacket on quick. There is heavy artillery coming your way!
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