Last Man Standing season 8 premiere: Final ratings expectations!

Happy New Year, and almost happy Last Man Standing season 8 premiere! New episodes are coming onto Fox in just over 24 hours. What can we expect during those? Think in terms of some family comedy, but also more currents of change.

For the sake of this article, though, we want to do our best in order to spotlight the show’s commercial success. After all, it was quite the hit for Fox in the fall of 2018! Season 7 premiered with a 1.8 rating in the 18-49 demographic, which is the best rating for a scripted show on a Friday night in a long time. That number was due to it being the first episode in over a year, and also one that had such a social-media campaign around it.

Because Last Man Standing was already un-canceled once, we have a hard time imagining that some of the same numbers are going to be seen at the start of season 8. Yet, we do think that a 1.4 rating, give or take, in the demo is feasible. Meanwhile, we wouldn’t be shocked if the show remains in the 1.1-1.2 rating range for much of the season.

The biggest reason to have optimism about Last Man Standing season 8 commercially is that Thursday is, in theory, a much better night for TV than Fridays. There are more viewers out there and we like to think that, by and large, the numbers will reflect that. (In January last year, we saw a number of season 7 episodes in the 1.0 – 1.1 range.)

Perhaps more so than analyzing individual ratings here, the larger question that we have to wonder is simply this — are we going to be seeing a season 9 happen? We think so long as the show averages more than a 0.8, there’s going to be an opportunity for more. Fox doesn’t have a lot of super-successful sitcoms and while they don’t have a lot of open programming hours, we don’t think cutting Last Man Standing is the answer.

Hopefully, we’ll hear more about the show’s renewal status later on in the spring — if the show does end in the future, we hope there’s a proper final season. We don’t want another cancellation!

Related News – Be sure to watch a sneak peek now from the season 8 premiere

What do you want to see when it comes to the Last Man Standing season 8 premiere?

Be sure to share right now in the comments! Also, remember to stick around for some other news on the series. (Photo: Fox.)