What will ABC do after canceling 'Roseanne'?

In the wake of the unprecedented, ABC now faces the unknown: What's next?

By canceling "Roseanne" following a racist tweet by its star, ABC has simultaneously lost the most-watched show on its schedule, with as many as 21 million viewers per episode when factoring in so-called "delayed" ratings, but has also opened a gaping hole on its Tuesday lineup.

"It's not like you can take one of your backup comedians and their show and throw that in at 8 p.m." said Ted Harbert, former chairman of NBC Broadcasting, and the president of ABC Entertainment during "Roseanne's" first run on the network in the 1990s. Referring to Disney chairman Bob Iger, and Ben Sherwood, co-chairman of Disney Media Groups, Harbert said the move "shows how intent they were on the principle they were trying to establish — that this will cause real damage to the schedule simply by doing the right thing."

The damage is certainly real. When the reboot of "Roseanne" — which first aired on ABC from 1988 to 1997 — launched in March, an estimated 18 million viewers tuned in, making this easily the highest-rated new series of the 2017-18 season. By May, the "live" viewership — that is, the number of people who tuned in each Tuesday at 8 — had dropped to 10 million. But within days, another 8 million to 10 million watched a streaming version of the show, either on ABC.go.com or another online service.

No TV series in history has effectively doubled its online viewership, making the reboot not just a TV success, but also a network holy grail — a series with as much draw online as on the broadcast network itself. ABC planned to air 13 new episodes next season, up from the nine that just aired.

In a statement released Tuesday canceling the show, ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey did not address the network's next move. That is likely to include either adding a new series to the lineup — one which may have been passed over as recently as two weeks ago when the fall lineup was announced —or pulling one from midseason.

One comedy was held for midseason — "Schooled," a spinoff of "The Goldbergs.".

Harbert, who said another possibility may involve moving Tuesday's established 9 p.m. series "black-ish" up to "Roseanne's" leadoff spot at 8, recalled that he had numerous standoffs with Barr during the series' original run, although none over politics and none that threatened the series.   

Nevertheless, he described his interactions with her during the show's nine-year run as "incredibly intense, and so intense for so often that it became normal — and not a good normal."

CORRECTIONS

The first season of the "Roseanne" reboot consisted of nine episodes. And ABC held only one comedy for midseason, "Schooled."