MIKE ON TV: Reboot Mania, Including the Return of 'Roseanne'

You might have been the more than 18.4 million people who watched the return of "Roseanne" on Tuesday night. It was a tremendous hit for ABC, which tells you all you need to know about why the networks keep bringing back old favorites. Not only are viewers hungry for nostalgia, but reboots and remakes are easy to promote and cut through the clutter in this age of too much TV.

As I wrote in IndieWire, "The triumphant return of “Roseanne” stunned executives, including top brass at ABC. Insiders at rival networks predicted a rating as high as 3.0 among adults 18-49, which would have been deemed a huge success. The hour-long return blew up those projections, coming in at a stunning 5.2 rating."

“Roseanne” is the latest in a series of remakes and reboots that have posted strong numbers — perpetuating the cycle. Fox’s “The X-Files,” NBC’s “Will & Grace” and Netflix’s “Fuller House” are among the series that have returned to huge audiences, leading to multiple-season orders. More, of course, are on the docket for next season, including CBS’ “Murphy Brown” revisit.

I spoke about it recently for the CBC, which recently did a full report on reboot mania, noting: "You've got to cut through the clutter," Schneider said. "We've got more channels now. We've got more streaming services and they all want to make noise. The quickest way to make noise is to bring back something that we all loved in our youth." Watch above!

KCRW's Screengrab: Knee-Deep In Midseason and Drowning In Premieres

Every week, Joe Adalian and I talk TV on KCRW's "Screengrab," a weekly segment that airs on Tuesday mornings at 8:45 a.m. on KCRW during "Morning Edition."

On Tuesday's episode, we talked about all the broadcast premieres in March and April, particularly on ABC:

We're used to Netflix dropping a bunch of new shows at once, but now it feels like the big broadcast networks are doing the same. But whereas Netflix can drop an entire season at once, the slow rollout that comes with a broadcast schedule can be brutal for shows that take time to find an audience. Part of the logjam this year comes from the Olympics--no one wanted to debut a show against the Games. The other factor is the Emmy cutoff date, which comes at the end of May, so some shows may be trying to make their debut later in order to be closer to that cutoff date. But all the new shows doesn't necessarily mean innovation: this week on ABC alone, you can see the rebooted version of 'Roseanne,' plus shows starring Jenna Fischer and Zach Braff--sitcom stars from shows ('The Office' and 'Scrubs,' respectively) that had their heyday more than a decade ago.

Listen below!