I’ve telling people ever since it was announced by ABC they were cancelling the latest Tim Allen show a few things; 1. The comedy is old, 2. ABC ain’t gonna pay the expense any longer and 3. Allen’s season contract is outworldly.. Now that doesn’t mean it’s a bad show, nor do I care about the political wisecracks (i like them), but people need to stop and think before crying foul. – PB/TK
5 reasons ABC might have canceled the Tim Allen comedy Last Man Standing – By Todd VanDerWerff / May 16 2017
It’s not often a network cancels its second most-watched comedy in a sudden, surprising move. Usually, if a show that important to a network has to go out, it’s granted some sort of “this will be your final season” reprieve. (Think of how CBS handled the end of How I Met Your Mother in 2014, for instance.)
Yet such a scenario has unfolded — surprising most industry observers (myself included) — with ABC’s Last Man Standing, a Tim Allen star vehicle that airs Friday nights and quietly pulls in more total viewers than any comedy on the network not named Modern Family. Indeed, it’s ABC’s third most-watched scripted show, period, after Modern Family and number one series Grey’s Anatomy. (Deadline has more exact viewership data, should you so desire.) And yet the network canceled it after its sixth season, without even a planned series finale.
The cancellation has left some conservative pundits wondering if Last Man Standing was canceled because Allen himself is conservative, and his character on the series is as well. (The other characters around him lean more toward the moderate or liberal, making Last Man Standing sort of a modern update of All in the Family, where everybody seems to have gotten their talking points from cable news.)
Is that true? It’s impossible to say. There are a ton of business reasons to cancel Last Man Standing, and the show’s much-vaunted viewership stats are less impressive than they seem when you dig into them. But still. Most renewal predictions had Last Man Standing safely closing in on a seventh season.
Continue to vox.com article: https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/5/12/15628038/last-man-standing-canceled-tim-allen?yptr=yahoo
