"When we greenlit The Conners we thought that the public would tune in to see the family return but what we've discovered is that people want Roseanne — they don't want the family by themselves."

"The marketing and publicity teams are horrified as no matter what promotional material is released — and let's be honest it's been limited for a show that launches next Tuesday — Roseanne's fans come out in force stating that they won't watch the show. The comments on social media tend to skew in favor of Roseanne and slam The Conners and the cast members who came back. Even dedicated fans of the Conner family feel conflicted about supporting a show that so swiftly eliminated the show's matriarch and creator."

From "EXCLUSIVE: 'People want Roseanne!' ABC execs fear spin-off show The Conners will crash without its fired star when it debuts next week and tell DailyMailTV killing off her character was a hasty 'knee-jerk' decision" (The Daily Mail).

ADDED: I suspect that the execs are angling to bring Roseanne back. I heard that they were going to begin the new show with the news that Roseanne had died, but the first episode hasn't aired yet, and it might be easy to edit the story into just having her away in the hospital, struggling but not yet dead, and then bring her back — the character and the celebrity. I think most Americans these days — especially the subset that watched "Roseanne" — want to see somebody in trouble fight back. Look at Brett Kavanaugh. Trump didn't abandon him, and he didn't apologize and disappear. It's just not a good story going forward if they killed off Roseanne and took the easy way out. The Conner family is about struggling through adversity and sticking together. It's completely incoherent to throw the mother away because she said one bad thing. And an awful lot of people think she was punished not for saying that one bad thing but for liking Trump. A lot of TV-watchers like Trump.

AND: I've been meaning to get around to posting this: "Americans Strongly Dislike PC Culture" (The Atlantic). 79% of  white people think political correctness is a problem, and the opposition to political correctness is even stronger among Asian-Americans (82%), Hispanics-Americans (87%), and American Indians (88%). Among racial groups, African-Americans are the most supportive of political correctness, but still, 75% are opposed. The only group that supported political correctness was "progressive activists," but even in that group 30% thought it's a problem.