• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, May 1, 2017

Sometimes it seems as if the traditional TV business is intent on collapsing in on itself.

That's the reaction I came to over the weekend when I contemplated the news that broke on Friday that the original cast of “Roseanne” is in the process of reconvening for some sort of “event” reunion series that appears likely to end up on ABC, the show’s original network.

Credit Deadline.com with this scoop. The story breathlessly described the original show as “one of the biggest comedies of the 1990s” (it ran from October 1988 to May 1997) and “a gold standard for its realistic portrayal of a working-class American family.”

A “gold standard”? Well, possibly in many of our misty, water-colored memories. But in fact, the quality of the “Roseanne” show ebbed and flowed and eventually ebbed over the course of its nine seasons.

What really seems to be happening is that some network execs have decided that mining their TV heritage for revival projects might make sense for at least two reasons: (1) Reviving familiar titles from the 1980s and ’90s childhoods of today's prime target audience (18-49) might help the networks attract these people; and (2) shows such as “Roseanne” are among the last generation of shows on network TV that really drew what used to be known as “network-sized” audiences.

The latter point implies that the broadcast networks considering these revivals are looking to possibly recapture those halcyon days before the business fragmented to the point where today's top prime-time shows get a fraction of the audiences that even middling network shows attracted, say, 15 years ago.

Maybe by reviving “Roseanne” and other shows such as “Will & Grace” (1998-2006), which NBC seems intent on bringing back, the networks can recapture some of that past glory.

A case can be made for a modern-day “Roseanne” revival for a number of reasons. For one thing, who wouldn’t be curious to see what happened to the show's characters in all of the upheavals of the last 20 years? A word of caution: This wish can only be fulfilled if the powers that be can succeed in getting all of the cast members back.

In addition, there are likely to be various pitfalls and challenges in the creative process of writing this new “Roseanne” series. If memory serves, the old show was characterized by all sorts of conflicts between Roseanne Barr and her various show-runners, and network execs.

Roseanne herself alluded to this tumult when I interviewed her in New York nearly 10 years after the show went off the air.

I asked her if working on the show had driven her crazy. “Uh-huh, absolutely,” she said. “It came at a great cost to my nervous system and my family. But I did it and won. In the last two years of my show, I had carte blanche to do whatever I wanted to do.

“And I just kept pushing it and kept pushing it,” she said. “Maybe I pushed it too far. Some people say I did, but, you know, the point was I did it and nobody will do it again. ... When I was done, they were like, ‘We're going to manufacture our own stars and the networks will own all production.’ Television changed.”

Maybe a “Roseanne” revival is just what network TV needs right now. Roseanne herself is a rare commodity. In my very first go-round of covering network upfronts in New York in the spring of 1988, I vividly remember the impression she made at ABC's presentation at the Marriott Marquis Theater.

After an hour or more of grumbling and eye-rolling on the part of the ad agency reps sitting near me who were reacting skeptically to everything ABC had thrown at them, this comedian who few in the audience had ever heard of before came to the dais and riveted everyone.

If the networks insist on attempting to recapture their past glory, then they can do a lot worse than lure Roseanne Barr out of semi-retirement.