Page 32 - On Abc News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

That people lack such a reasonable level of self-control that they can't go back to 500-year-old stereotypes about race. i hope this isn't just a lesson for roseanne barr. i hope this is a lesson for abc. hope this is a lesson for every network out there that this behavior is inappropriate. it will cost you money. it will cost your reputation and it will make it impossible for you to continue to produce. i hope that's what people get out of this, not just some sort of free speech argument. >> jamil, donald trump, after the first episode aired this year and got a huge rating, donald trump told ...

Conspiracy nuts. but we hired one as president. and what affect does that have on the viewing audience? what effect frankly does it have on her castmates there? there is a black child who is cast as her granddaughter in the show. a black woman, wanda sykes, was a writer on the show. does she think they're apes too? i actually would like to ask roseanne that question. but she blocked me on twitter. >> and jason, it seems that abc learned a lesson that nbc did not learn when it had donald trump under contract for that show because donald trump was attacking the president's birth certificate and ...

So you're sort of sitting there wondering, well, what are they going to do? because this was so successful and because it had ginned up so much conversation for them. and that's really difficult now when you have so much television programing to find something that stands out. and, you know, abc did. >> and eric, you have been to so many television critics association gatherings in los angeles where, as you know, you get to speak to the casts of and the writers and the producers of all of the shows on all of the networks. and that's the part of this that i think people don't quite understand, ...

You know, roseanne crossed a line that both channing dungey, abc, and disney could not let stand. >> and soraya, what we might find out in the future, who called? who called bob ago ier? by that i mean among the prominent people working at abc, as actor, as writers, as show creator, show runners, who called and said i can't continue at abc if roseanne continues at abc. >> well, we know that wanda sykes, who is a writer on the show. >> that was huge. >> walked away. she tweeted publicly. this wasn't something -- this was necessarily discussion behind closed doors. she took a very public stand a...

Are you going to cancel "the apprentice"? what's going to happen? and multiply that by all the people who are at the network. i do think that for abc, we had a couple of things in play here. we had the fact that abc's owned by disney, and disney has a very definite family-friendly, inclusive brand that bob iger has defended quite often. and there was a sense that this kind of statement violated that. and certainly they may have felt some pressure to deal with that. there was also a sense that boycotts were in the air. people were talking about targeting the advertisers that might spend money o...