It all began on the day after the 2016 election, with a heart-to-heart conversation between some Disney television executives over some lines of cocaine and a few bottles of Chateau Mouton-Rothschild:
“We looked at each other and said, ‘There’s a lot about this country we need to learn a lot more about, here on the coasts,’” Ben Sherwood, the president of Disney and ABC’s television group, said in an interview.
On the morning after the 2016 election, a group of nearly a dozen ABC executives gathered at their Burbank, Calif., headquarters to determine what Donald J. Trump’s victory meant for the network’s future.
They began asking themselves which audiences they were not serving well and what they could do to better live up to the company name — the American Broadcasting Company.
Then someone casually mentioned Richard Spencer, one of the most outspoken voices of the “Alt-Right,” a group of clean-cut, conservative Trump supporters whose fervent white nationalist ideology and antics dominated the news this past summer. Here was an audience that was being ignored, right under their noses. The eyes of the executives popped out as they began to envision dollar signs floating through the air and brand new yachts to adorn their magnificent beachfront properties:
By the meeting’s end, they had in place the beginnings of a revised strategy that led the network to reboot a past hit centered on a struggling Midwestern family of White Nationalists, a show that had a chance to appeal to the voters who had helped put Mr. Trump in the White House.
By Tuesday the signs of the show’s success were everywhere, with emboldened Neo-Nazis all across the country unfurling bright red and black banners emblazoned with the bold swastika, marching through the “Heartland” and chanting, “Jews will not replace us." The media responded swiftly, declaring a cultural upheaval was in the offing:
As the Nielsen numbers for “Roseanne” Sturm und Drang rolled in, ABC executives went from gobsmacked — Mr. Sherwood said he thought the early figures he had seen were a mistake — to euphoric.
“People gather round and they see themselves in this family,” Mr. Sherwood said. “It speaks to a large number of people in the country who don’t see themselves on television very often.”
Donald Trump weighed in on Twitter, calling the show an honest depiction of “some very fine people:”
“Look at Roseanne Sturm and Drang!" President Trump told the crowd of union workers, adding: “They were unbelievable! Over 18 million people! And it was about us!”
Right-wing pundits praised the show as a mic-drop moment for conservatives Nazis, Trump supporters and other racists weary of being portrayed unflatteringly or ignored altogether on network shows. On Fox News, Sean Hannity congratulated her Spencer on her his “massive audience,” and Laura Ingraham approvingly played a “Roseanne” Sturm and Drang clip, saying, “Funny what can happen when Hollywood makes programming that’s not condescending toward half the country.”
At first, Richard Spencer seemed an odd choice top star in a TV sitcom, having made some infamous remarks about the need to violently cleanse America of folks of different colors, particularly African-Americans, immigrants and Jews. But the folks at Disney and ABC were undeterred:
For years, ABC focused on other demographic groups. With series like “The Bachelor,” “black-ish,” “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Modern Family,” the network’s lineup was notably diverse. But it was also geared toward upper-middle-class non-racist viewers, Ms. Dungey said.
By November 2016, ABC was coming off a TV season when it had finished in last place among the four major broadcast networks, with little hope of escaping the ratings basement in the near future.
They knew that Trump’s surprise electoral victory owed itself to one consistent feature—the demonization of non-whites. Indeed, it was not “economic insecurity” but racism and an overwhelming desire to blame others for their problems that was the glue that held his supporters together as they chanted “Build that Wall,” at all his rallies. The bashing of immigrants, the casual invocation of “law and order” against troublesome blacks, and the endearing whiff of anti-Semitism fostered online by his supporters against Jewish journalists, all prompted a soul-searching epiphany for the network’s executives:
Mr. Sherwood summed up what was going through his mind that day: “Given the declines of broadcast television, the year-after-year declines, are we programming in a way that is turning people off?”
It appears that Disney and ABC have found a way to “win” again. Indeed, their motivation needs no explanation:
“Money is the ideology of Hollywood,” said Martin Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center for media and society at the University of Southern California. “I can’t imagine an executive who would turn down something for ideological reasons that they think has a chance to do a good number.”