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Last Man Standing
Fox has now spoken out about one of the most shocking renewals during this television season — its revival of ABC’s Last Man Standing. Chairmen and CEO of Fox Television Group Dana Walden explained why the network decided to pick up the Tim Allen comedy a year after its cancellation. As you may imagine, Fox’s reasoning has a lot to do with another blue-collar, conservative-leaning comedy, Roseanne.
“Obviously I think everyone took a good hard look at the performance of Roseanne,” Walden said. “It did so well and it certainly did remind us that we have a huge iconic comedy star in our Fox family in Tim Allen. We’ve been talking to Tim throughout the year.”
Walden also revealed that they tried to move Last Man Standing over to Fox when the series was canceled in 2017. Though the NBC show’s rating gave them pause this year, Fox’s original interest in the show didn’t have anything to do with Roseanne. “We always felt like ABC didn’t really prioritize Last Man Standing,” she said. “We always wondered how it would do if it was given a better opportunity and prioritized more in terms of a network’s agenda. We were emboldened by Roseanne.”
Walden also explained why Fox decided to move forward with the Tim Allen show while canceling the beloved Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Basically it all came down to rating and accessibility. As critically-acclaimed as Brooklyn Nine-Nine was, it averaged less than 3 million viewers a week. The six-season long Last Man Standing, on the other hand, routinely delivered around 8 million viewers on a weekly basis. Also, Last Man Standing is easier for new viewers to follow than Brooklyn Nine-Nine‘s serialized comedy.
When asked if ABC’s cancellation of Last Man Standing had anything to do with politics, Fox Television’s other Chairman and CEO Gary Newman said it likely had more to do with vertical integration. “Tim’s personal politics are not a big feature of the show and if you were to talk to Tim he would say [his character] is a centrist and the show never delved deeply into politics,” he said. “We think its a funny show and audience responded to it… and we thought there was an opportunity there for us particularly after adding Thursday Night Football.”
For all of the talk and headlines about this renewal, Last Man Standing will be premiering during the dreaded Friday night slot. New episodes will premiere in the fall at 8 p.m. ET. Between NBC, Fox, and ABC swapping shows like they’re trading cards, this is turning out to be one of the weirdest renewal seasons we’ve seen in a while.
