When I heard that ABC had cancelled Tim Allen’s show Last Man Standing, my first thought was: “Wait, the guy from Home Improvement? He had another show?” I don’t really pay a lot of attention to network TV these days.* But millions of people watched it every week, and they were really disappointed.
Allen thinks his show got the axe because he’s a conservative and a Trump supporter. (It’s possible to be both, I’m told.) ABC says it isn’t so. AFP:
US television network ABC denied Sunday that it had canceled comedian Tim Allen’s popular sitcom “Last Man Standing” due to its conservative politics…
Allen’s character, an outspoken conservative, echoed the political positions of the 64-year-old actor, a Republican who attended President Donald Trump’s inauguration…
“Politics had absolutely nothing to do with it,” ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey told the Television Critics Association press tour in Los Angeles…
She described “Last Man Standing” as a “high quality show” but added that the network had not been able to find room in the schedules for a seventh season.
No room on the schedule? For a show that pulled in 8 million viewers on a Friday night? It was the second most-watched comedy on ABC, after Modern Family. Meanwhile, lower-rated and presumably more expensive ABC shows like Agents of SHIELD and Once Upon a Time keep limping along, season after season, and the network keeps finding a place in the schedule for them.
ABC can air whatever it wants, and cancel whatever it wants. If these guys don’t want ad money from a bunch of MAGA-heads, that’s their business. Literally. But how about being honest about it? Why make half-hearted excuses for their obvious bias?
Here’s the trailer for one of the shows that’s replacing it this fall:
I love British actors who come over here and take our jobs. “You can tell I’m an Amerrrican because I hit my rrrr’s extra-harrrd!”
I’m probably more likely to watch Inhumans than Last Man Standing, because I’m a nerd and I haven’t learned my lesson from the other disappointing Marvel shows. (Plus, Black Bolt rules.) Apparently, ABC is counting on at least 8 million more people just like me. Good luck, guys!
(Hat tip: Jazz Shaw)
*I know this sounds arrogant, but that’s only because I’m better than you.