Was canceling Tim Allen’s Last Man Standing a clear mistake for ABC?

We’re going to talk somewhat about Friday’s ratings within this article, but much of that is through the lens of Tim Allen’s Last Man Standing.

Before we get any deeper into this, though, keep this in mind: This isn’t a political article. We’re not going to get into any of the political speculation as to why the ABC show was canceled. The network claims that it wasn’t political and we weren’t in the room looking at the reasons for their decision. The thing we are more interested in discussing here are the ratings, and upon looking at those from last year in comparison to where ABC is now it looks like they may have made the biggest mistake of the entire 2017-18 season. From a pure numbers perspective it looks bad.

Over the course of the 2016-17 season Last Man Standing averaged a 1.2 rating in the 18-49 demographic. If the show continued to average that this season, it would be the #1 show on Friday night. Consider that for a moment. Given that it only declined year-to-year only 5% last season, there’s a chance that it would be the #1 show on Fridays even if it were to decline a little bit.

Now, compare the ratings performance it was getting last year to what Once Upon a Time, the show now inhabiting this timeslot, is currently getting. It’s not good. This show ended up generating a series-low 0.5 rating in the demo on Friday night and so far this season it is averaging around a 0.7. It’s hard to be excited about that sort of performance. While ABC does own more of the show than they did with Last Man Standing and there may be other cost considerations to make here, you still have to wonder if they are really making more money with the fairy-tale drama these days. As it is, the optics here are not great and Last Man Standing could’ve easily stuck around for another couple of years with these numbers.

While Inhumans isn’t airing in the old Last Man Standing timeslot, it’s still worth pointing out just how poor some of these numbers are here. Friday’s new episode generated a pretty-pitiful 0.4 rating, and that makes us pretty darn confident that we won’t be seeing any more of this show in the near future.

Friday nights are hard to program, but ABC had somehow figured out a way to do it that allowed themselves to get some solid numbers and routinely compete for the #1 spot. After seeing where the show is at this point it absolutely feels as though the network effectively looked a gift horse in the mouth.

What do you think: Did ABC make a clear mistake at this point canceling Last Man Standing?

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