‘Roseanne’ Premiere Sets Major New Viewing Record

The premiere episode of the Roseanne revival continues its wave of popularity by setting a major new viewing record.

As reported by Deadline, the debut episode has officially hit 25.04 million total viewers, as the Live+3 (people who watched the episode live, plus over the next three days) ratings lifted by 6.69 million viewers.

This beats out the original Live+3 record held by the September 2014 premiere How to Get Away with Murder, which saw a gain of 5.93 million viewers.

Interestingly, Barr recently took to Twitter to call out New York and Los Angeles for turning in the lowest ratings of her revival series.

“New York and LA-had the lowest ratings for a gender fluid child character & a Hillary supporting sister character,” Barr wrote in a now-deleted tweet, while also adding a hashtag of her own name.

According to Deadline, both cities are at the top of the TV markets and neither of them landed in the top 20 individual city ratings for the series revival’s debut.

The top city in the show’s ratings was Tulsa, Oklahoma, followed by Cincinnati, Ohio and Kansas City, Missouri. Noticeably, these are all cities from states that voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, who Barr is a very outspoken supporter of.

The sitting U.S. President appreciates her support so much that he reportedly even called to congratulate her on the massive ratings her show pulled in, despite not doing well in the two biggest markets.

According to EW, the premiere episode scored a rating of 5.1 in the 18-49 demographic, which apparently beats the Stormy Daniels interview on 60 Minutes at the beginning of the week.

The outlet also noted that this appears to be the biggest rating for a TV comedy in recent years, and indicated that it even topped any ratings on a regularly scheduled episode of the hit drama This is Us.

A source close to the show spoke with TV Line, telling the outlet that ABC was already in talks for continuing the show, but with the huge premiere the show had, the network is reportedly ready to make plans for it to be official.

Barr herself recently opened up about the possible continuation of the series.

“We all want to keep doing it, so we just hope people like it and they watch it, and it gets renewed, you know, we all want that,” she told reporters.

Whitney Cummings, co-showrunner and executive producer for the revival, also previously talked about the show moving past more than just one season, explaining that all the cast and writer’s schedules would have to align for it to happen.

“Laurie can’t stop getting nominated for awards,” Cummings joked, referencing series star Laurie Metcalf’s recent award nominations for her supporting role in the critically acclaimed film Lady Bird. “[Hopefully] we can find a way to get her for a couple months straight. From what I gather, everyone is ready to do it again,” she added. “Everybody wants to do it again.”