Abc's Star Wars

By Richard Zoglin

Tom Arnold, always a blunt fellow, once offered this characterization of himself and his wife Roseanne: "We're America's worst nightmare -- white trash with money." He wasn't quite right. For most of America, the couple are an outrageous but entertaining sideshow to the three-ring circus of network TV. Only at ABC have they become something of a bad dream.

Upset at the network's agonizingly drawn-out indecision over whether to renew his sitcom, The Jackie Thomas Show, Tom a week ago announced he was leaving to do a new show for CBS. One unhappy Arnold usually means two, and sure enough, Roseanne threatened to take her top-rated show to another network as well. (ABC has the contractual right to air Roseanne for one more season.) By the end of last week, the parties had reached a face-saving accord: a nonexclusive deal giving ABC the first look at shows the couple will develop. But that hasn't silenced the fusillade of abuse aimed at ABC executives. "They are evil people," Roseanne told TIME. "Their attitude was, 'We're going to teach this girl a lesson.' It was a male supremacist attitude."

With their crude, shoot-from-the-hips outspokenness, the Arnolds are an oddly refreshing phenomenon in Hollywood. Anger in show business is usually a carefully stage-managed affair -- couched in lawyerly evasion, discreet no- comments, calculated no-shows. Such niceties are unknown to the Arnolds. They have turned bad manners into a power statement.

After marrying in 1990, they quickly became TV's most obstreperous two- career couple. First Roseanne insisted that Tom be made an executive producer of her hit show. Then she pressured ABC to give Tom his own sitcom and air it in the choice time period following Roseanne. The Jackie Thomas Show -- in which Arnold gamely battled poor material as a dim-witted, egotistical TV star -- went on the air in December but was a ratings disappointment: though ranking in the Top 20, it lost an average 27% of Roseanne's viewership. ABC hedged on whether it would survive.

Brandishing her clout as the network's most valuable star, Roseanne resorted to public arm twisting. In mid-April, she announced on the Tonight show that she and Tom were moving to CBS. The following week she complained to the New York Times that ABC executives -- primarily former entertainment chief Robert Iger -- had lied and treated her with "disrespect." Their main beef, the Arnolds say, is that ABC programmers told them they liked Tom's show but kept putting off a decision on whether to renew it. "They never, ever leveled with us," says Arnold. "They strung us along so that I couldn't work on another show or sell Jackie Thomas ((elsewhere)). They told us we couldn't negotiate with other networks."

ABC, which has declined all comment on the dispute, finally canceled the show a week ago. (Officially, the network says only that the show is "off the air" because Arnold has left the network.) The Arnolds' tantrum appears to have backfired. "You can't publicly humiliate the head of a network and then make him cave in," says independent producer Faye Mayo. "If Roseanne and Tom had quietly negotiated behind the scenes, like Cosby and other major stars, they would have probably gotten what they wanted."

The Arnolds, however, say they did get what they want. Tom's new sitcom, in which he will play a factory-worker father, is being created by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, one of TV's hottest producers (Hearts Afire; the Clinton Administration). "At CBS," says Roseanne, "they wanted Tom for his talent." Meanwhile the Arnolds will start production this summer on a feature film in which they play a working-class couple on the road. Roseanne says she will honor her commitment to do Roseanne for ABC one more season but vows to bar network executives from the set. "They are not welcome," she says. After that, the show will be offered to "whoever has the money. Except that it will go to ABC only if they change the top executives."

All this bluster ignores a couple of realities. Roseanne is owned by Carsey- Werner Productions; it, not Roseanne, has the ultimate say on the show's future. (Carsey-Werner executives would not comment on Roseanne's problems with ABC.) Nor are the Arnolds likely to find life outside ABC as rosy as they might hope. Roseanne has shown no ability to draw an audience in any fictional role besides Roseanne Conner. Her last film, She-Devil, was a flop ("They exploited me," she says now), and an April TV movie, The Woman Who Loved Elvis, in which she and Tom co-starred, got middling ratings.

As for Tom's new series, the Arnolds claim CBS has committed to a fall launch and a 22-episode order. But as of Friday, a CBS spokesman insisted, "Nothing has been confirmed," and insiders say the show may be put off until midseason. "It's a great opportunity," said CBS broadcast president Howard Stringer of Arnold's new show, "if it comes off."

And now they're CBS's problem.

With reporting by Martha Smilgis/Los Angeles