ABC’s Roseanne revival is staying quite strong in Week 2.
Tuesday’s episode averaged 15.2 million viewers and a 3.9 adults 18-49 rating.
That’s down 24 percent from last week’s chart-busting one-hour premiere (or down 20 percent if you only count last week’s first half hour).
But after last week’s huge numbers, the question wasn’t whether the controversial comedy’s ratings would drop, but by how much. Most new programs tend to fall about 10-17 percent from their premiere. Titles that debut extremely high in the ratings are more likely to slip a bit more due to having drawn an outsized share of curiosity tune-in the first time around. So Roseanne falling 20-24 percent — while hardly ideal — isn’t really unexpected, either.
ABC pointed out Roseanne still retained more than NBC’s Will & Grace reboot in its second week, and marks the highest-rated non-premiere-episode comedy telecast since an episode of The Big Bang Theory from 2015.
Last week’s one-hour Roseanne premiere was a ratings sensation that eventually delivered 25 million viewers over its first four days of live viewing and DVR playback.
The debut kicked off a flurry of attention to the show, including a phone call from President Trump to star Roseanne Barr. Since then, the show’s politics (Is it pro-Trump? Anti-Trump? Neither?) have been fiercely debated, and an old controversy resurfaced when Barr’s Hitler photo shoot began making the rounds on social media.
