Ratings: A look at Last Man Standing, The Cool Kids, & Proven Innocent

Let’s face it — Friday night’s television lineup was not exactly chock full of new programming. As a matter of fact, CBS and NBC were basically off the air in terms of there being new programming! Fox had a lot of real estate to work with, and the main thing we were curious about is whether or not this would lead to ratings boosts for any of their shows.

What were the end results? We’ve got all of that for you within…

Last Man Standing – Even if NBC, CBS, and The CW were rolling out new episodes last night (ABC still was, but that’s it), you could still expect the Tim Allen comedy to be the top-rated show of the night. It has an extremely loyal audience, but that is probably in part why its ratings (a 1.0 rating and over 5.5 million viewers) only posted minimal gains week-to-week. Most of the viewers who love Last Man Standing likely view it as their first choice on Friday — they’re probably watching it already over MacGyver and Blindspot, hence why there weren’t any better ratings with those two shows off the air.

We’ve made it clear for months now (including the video below from this past fall — subscribe to CarterMatt on YouTube if you want more like it) that there’s likely going to be a season 8 of Last Man Standing. It just would make zero sense at this point for Fox to look at this show and be like “yeah, we don’t want it” after it is responsible for delivering them some of their most-impressive timeslot wins in a pretty long stretch of time.

If you missed it last night, preview the next Last Man Standing episode over here.

The Cool Kids – With a 0.7 rating for Friday night’s new episode, it is clear that the numbers for the Martin Mull comedy have faded slightly from where they were this past fall — yet, we don’t really see this as a major deterrent to the show’s season 2 chances. We’re still talking about a comedy that routinely keeps 70-80% of its Last Man Standing lead-in and one that seems to be a nice compliment to it. We’ve felt confident in at least its short-term future for a while now; were not willing to shout “give it more than just a one-season renewal!” on a rooftop, but we feel fairly confident that it is going to make it to this point.

Proven Innocent – Finally, let’s take a quick look at a show facing far greater jeopardy. With a 0.5 rating for last night’s episode, Proven Innocent actually did fare better with The Blacklist and Hawaii Five-0 on the air — it benefited so much more than either Last Man Standing or The Cool Kids did. Yet, this is still not a good rating for a first-year show in an era where many programs lose around 15% of their live audience from one season to the next. Unless Proven Innocent continues to prove that it’s capable of building an audience, it will unfortunately be sentenced to an early exit come May.

What did you watch on TV Friday night?

Be sure to share some of your thoughts right now in the comments! (Photo: Fox.)