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Friday, May 12, 2017

Despite High Ratings, ABC Cancels Trump-Friendly Sitcom 'Last Man Standing'


Despite high ratings in its Friday timeslot, ABC has cancelled the funniest comedy with Conservative values on their network – Last Man Standing. I’m not surprised since ABC is a Left-Wing network promoting Leftist values which means a hate-Trump slant.

If you Google “Last Man Standing,” you’ll discover several Conservative outlets have the story. I discovered the story on the Daily Wire which I am cross posting below.

JRH 5/12/17
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Despite High Ratings, ABC Cancels Trump-Friendly Sitcom 'Last Man Standing'


MAY 11, 2017

Even though it had been dumped on Friday nights, the Tim Allen sitcom Last Man Standing enjoyed ratings that Deadline describes as "very respectable for any night and especially Friday[.]" Every week, the half-hour comedy, one of the very few aimed to appeal to America's heartland, won its time-slot in the all-important demo, including 6.4 million overall same-day viewers. Deadline further adds that  "[w]hile most returning shows were down year-to-year 20-30%, LMS was virtually flat, off just by 5% in total viewers and adults 18-49[.]"

Those are very impressive numbers for a show that has been around for six full seasons.

But that is not all!

Last Man Standing was ABC's Friday anchor, meaning a show that could not only be counted on to win the night but one that kept viewers tuned in to whatever shows came after. Anchors are also crucially important when it comes to launching new shows.

But that is not all!

The real money in the sitcom business comes from syndication rights, selling the reruns on a per episode basis to other networks. Last Man Standing is not only a syndication smash, a virtual cash cow, per Deadline it is the "rare off-network ratings success story these days."

When a show does this well in syndication, every episode becomes a bar of gold, a likely source of rolling revenue for years and years to come. Even aging sitcoms that lose their audience are sometimes renewed for an extra season because each of those episodes is worth a fortune in syndication.

So why was this popular and profitable sitcom abruptly canceled?

Well, this is where the byzantine world of television and politics and fascist corporations becomes as interesting as it is revealing and chilling.

After six seasons, the ABC broadcast network is contractually required to cover the cost of producing the show. Until now, Last Man Standing had been produced and paid for by 20th Century Fox TV before being licensed for broadcast to ABC.
  
To no one's surprise (explained below), and although 20th Century Fox had agreed to reduce its fees, without even bothering to negotiate something that would allow them to hold onto this hit show, ABC abruptly canceled it, using the fig leaf of cost, singling out Tim Allen's high salary.

The real reason ABC canceled "Last Man Standing" was almost certainly due to politics. Allen's character is, as described by Deadline, a

political conservative and devout Christian adhering to traditional American values, the blue-collar comedy appeals to viewers in the Heartland, a constituency that helped elect Donald Trump as president and has been energized post-election as evidenced by the ratings success of new USA drama Shooter.

Through his character, the politically conservative Allen has poked fun at Hillary Clintonpolitical correctness, and the Left at large. Worse still, he has created a popular, sympathetic and likable television personality who holds the beliefs and values our entertainment and media elites want to tell us can only belong to Nazis.

Moreover, the ABC television network is owned by Disney, a rabidly left-wing company run by Bob Iger, who, for years, has been a huge supporter of both Bill and Hillary Clinton. In order to protect the Clintons, Iger has gone so far as to eat $40 million. The Path to 9/11 was a popular 2006 miniseries that offered only light criticism of Bill Clinton's handling of Osama bin Laden. Although the original idea was to rerun the program every September 11, Iger has not only refused to rerun it even once (losing all that advertising revenue), he won’t even release it on home video.

That kind of corporate fascism, Iger's willingness to shove a $40 million investment into a ditch, only helps us to make sense of ABC's strangling of a proven golden goose like Last Man Standing.

No one better understands the power of popular culture than those who work in it. They know that if even one is allowed to get through, a Path to 9/11, a Last Man Standing, a Duck Dynasty, a Passion of the Christ, a 13 Hours, a Fox News, that it must be crushed, toxified, or memory-holed out of the fear that those brainwashed by popular culture might discover another side to the story. And then there is the intolerable risk that a success might breed more of them. [Bold text by Editor]

No matter the financial cost, this cannot be allowed.

Oh, and if you buy ABC's excuse, riddle me this report that just so happened to be released within hours of the news that Last Man Standing had been canceled:

Reaching both agreements, especially a new license-fee pact with ABC, was not easy. Talks between the network and 20th TV started awhile ago. The studio originally sought a two-season renewal, which was met with resistance by the network at first until the two sides finally came to a deal. It followed an agreement in principle ABC and 20th TV reached at the end of February, which outlined what the license-fee structure should look like predicated on making new salary agreements with the actors.

Weird how ABC was totally comfortable doing for the left-wing Modern Family exactly what it wouldn't do for a show that appeals to the other half of the country.

P.S. Everyone should read Ben Shapiro's "Primetime Propaganda," a brilliant and detailed look at how the public airwaves have been high-jacked by left-wing propagandists, oftentimes at the expense of success and profit.
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Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.

© COPYRIGHT 2017, THE DAILY WIRE

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