Tim Allen comedy Last Man Standing ends May 20. It will have 194 episodes and three seasons on Fox, after six on ABC. 

Allen plays Mike Baxter, a happily married father of three daughters who finds himself the odd man out in a home dominated by females. Nancy Travis, Amanda Fuller, Molly McCook, Hector Elizondo and Christoph Sanders are also in the cast. 

The series ends with a one-hour finale. Part 1 is “Baxter Boot Camp” and Part 2 is “Keep On Truckin’.”

“This was a wonderful experience, and it expressed itself, I believe, in a wonderful television show like none other,” Allen said at a Fox press event last week. “There are other sitcoms that I really adore, but I would really shout out to this one.”

Allen called the cast “a most selfless group of performers.”

“We all worked as a team,” he added. 

Last Man Standing is produced by 20th Television. The series was created by Jack Burditt. 

“It has been an honor to be home for Tim Allen and Last Man Standing,” said Michael Thorn, Fox Entertainment president, when the final season was announced late last year. “Millions of families have long enjoyed the show because, perhaps, they see themselves in the Baxters. The loyal affection they’ve shown proves just how much this series has meant to them.”

The Masked Dancer debuts on Fox Sunday Dec. 27. Featuring masked celebrities showing off their dance moves, the spinoff of The Masked Singer, inspired by a segment on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, is hosted by Craig Robinson. The panel includes Ken Jeong, Paula Abdul, Brian Austin Green and Ashley Tisdale. 

After its premiere, The Masked Dancer shifts to Wednesdays starting Jan. 6. 

Comedies Call Me Kat and Last Man Standing start on Fox Sunday, Jan. 3. Hell’s Kitchen premieres Jan. 7, The Resident and Prodigal Son debut Jan. 12, and 9-1-1 and 9-1-1: Lone Star get rolling Jan. 18. 

Call Me Kat stars Mayim Bialik, who executive produces with Jim Parsons and Darlene Hunt. Bialik plays a woman who struggles every day against society and her mother to prove that she can still live a happy and fulfilling life despite being single at 39.  

After their Sunday premieres, Call Me Kat and Last Man Standing shift to Thursdays. It will be season nine of Last Man Standing, and its final one. Tim Allen stars. 

It will be season 19 of Hell’s Kitchen. Chef Gordon Ramsay takes the show to Las Vegas for the first time. 

It will be season four of The Resident, showcasing the daily heroism of today’s healthcare workers. Matt Czuchry and Emily VanCamp star. 

Prodigal Son starts season two. Tom Payne plays a criminal profiler and Michael Sheen plays his father, a notorious serial killer. 

9-1-1 and 9-1-1: Lone Star will have back-to-back season premieres Jan. 18. Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Tim Minear created the shows. 

Tim Allen comedy Last Man Standing will conclude with its ninth season, which premieres on Fox in January. It will have 194 episodes and three seasons on Fox, after six on ABC. 

Allen plays Mike Baxter, a happily married father of three daughters who finds himself the odd man out in a home dominated by females. Nancy Travis, Amanda Fuller, Molly McCook, Hector Elizondo and Christoph Sanders are also in the cast. 

“It has been an honor to be home for Tim Allen and Last Man Standing,” said Michael Thorn, Fox Entertainment president. “Millions of families have long enjoyed the show because, perhaps, they see themselves in the Baxters. The loyal affection they’ve shown proves just how much this series has meant to them. On behalf of everyone at Fox, a big, big thank you to Last Man Standing’s brilliant cast, led by Tim, Nancy and Hector, as well as its writers and crew, headed by showrunner Kevin Abbott. We’ll be rooting them on throughout the season as they conclude what has been an impressive run.”

Last Man Standing is produced by 20th Television. The series was created by Jack Burditt. Kevin Abbott, Matt Berry, Kevin Hench, Ed Yeager, Tim Allen, Marty Adelstein, Shawn Levy, Becky Clements, Richard Baker, Rick Messina, Pat Bullard, Mike Teverbaugh, Linda Teverbaugh and John Amodeo are executive producers. 

“I’ve been one lucky dude to have been part of Last Man Standing,” said Allen. “I so appreciate the incredible support from our fans over this near decade of work. As we approach the ninth season, I just admire and feel grateful for all the hard work our wonderful cast and crew have done. We had all considered ending the show after last season, but together with Fox, we decided to add a year so we could produce a full season to create the gentle and fun goodbye. I'm looking forward to a memorable and hilarious final season.”

Fox has renewed comedy Last Man Standing and drama The Resident for 2020-2021. Last Man Standing, starring Tim Allen, will enter its third season on Fox, and ninth overall. The show first ran on ABC. 

The Resident will enter season four. 

“The Resident and Last Man Standing are such important parts of Fox, and we’re so pleased they will be returning next season,” said Michael Thorn, Fox Entertainment president. “We want to thank all of the writers, actors, directors, producers and talented crews for both of these shows, and, of course, our friends and producing partners at 20th Century Fox Television.”

Last Man Standing has Allen as Mike Baxter, happily married father of three daughters, trying to maintain his manliness amidst so many females. Last Man Standing is Fox’s most-watched comedy, averaging more than 8 million multiplatform viewers, according to the network. 20th Century Fox Television produces the show, which Jack Burditt created. 

The Resident reveals what happens, good and bad, in hospitals around the country. Matt Czuchry, Emily VanCamp, Bruce Greenwood, Manish Dayal and Shaunette Renée Wilson are in the cast. The Resident averages nearly 10 million multiplatform viewers. 

20th Century Fox Television produces the show. 

Roseanne, depicting a working-class family and its President Donald Trump-supporting matriarch, was television’s big story last season, averaging nearly 19 million viewers on a live-plus-seven-day basis.

Roseanne Barr’s racist tweet led to its cancellation, but the network wasn’t done with the idea: The Conners premieres Oct. 16, and ABC hopes the gang can do some semblance of the robust ratings Roseanne garnered last year.

Ignoring the fiasco of the tweet, other networks are chasing The Conners into Middle America, hoping to win viewers with heartland themes built around the everyman as hero: Last Man Standing on Fox; NBC’s stacked Chicago shows on Wednesdays; FBI and God Friended Me on CBS; and a handful of series on the streaming networks.

“When something like Roseanne happens, the industry as a whole looks to replicate that in some way, shape or form,” media consultant Bill Carroll said.

Very few network executives will ever concede to targeting one section of the country or the other, and anyone on the broadcast side of the business is thinking broad appeal for anything on air. But these days, the aim seems to be at the very “flyover” states once ignored by tastemakers. And while series on the streaming networks have for years focused not so much on vast appeal, but on select viewers interested in gripping stories, some on the streaming side say their shows, too, shoot for viewers in the heartland.

Before Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan premiered on Prime Video Aug. 31, placing Clancy’s ace analyst in the heat of the Middle East, showrunner Carlton Cuse said he saw Ryan as a “classic American hero” when TV’s defense-minded antiheroes, on the likes of Homeland and 24, bend the rules to complete their missions. “He’s a guy with morals, and a sense of altruism and patriotism,” Cuse said.

Jack Ryan aims to depict the federal defense agencies, such as the CIA and FBI, in a noble light when many are quick to criticize them, Cuse added. Patriotic civil servants play well in Middle America.

“It’s the type of show that’s not made for TV critics, it’s made for viewers,” he said. “We think it has broad appeal — and appeals to a whole section of the country.”

Same goes for drama One Dollar, which premiered Aug. 30 on CBS All Access. The show, which tells the story of multiple murders through a dollar bill that changes hands among connected characters, is set in Pittsburgh, where showrunner Craig Zobel said it can depict the city’s current class clash between the big brains of Carnegie Mellon and Uber and Pittsburgh’s steel-production past.

“The idea was to set something that wasn’t New York or Los Angeles,” he said. “It’s indicative of another part of America we don’t see all the time on TV.”

A year ago, Amazon chairman and CEO Jeff Bezos said he wanted a global hit or two out of Amazon Studios, something akin to Game of Thrones. “We’re a mass-market brand,” then-studio head Roy Price told Variety. Yet Amazon’s big fall release, Matthew Weiner anthology series The Romanoffs, which premiered on Prime Video Oct. 12, is hardly mass-market. Its pilot, set in Paris (with subtitles), feels like an independent film, running nearly 90 minutes and featuring a main character with racist tendencies.

Networks Soldier On

President Trump’s surprise win for the White House gave voice to overlooked voters in the heartland, and it appears to have prompted networks to make sure they don’t overlook them. The 2017-18 broadcast season featured a glut of military themed programming, including SEAL Team on CBS, Valor on The CW and The Brave on NBC. At the time, The CW president Mark Pedowitz downplayed any notion of programming to red or blue states.

“It doesn’t matter what the attitude of the country is,” Pedowitz said. “If it’s right, people will watch it.”

People, for the most part, did not watch. SEAL Team returned this season, while the other shows did not. (History also cancelled military drama Six, about Navy SEALS, after two seasons this past summer.)

Do red states and blue states actually like different programs? A study from E-Poll showed that Democrats’ favorite show for the 2017-2018 season was Game of Thrones, followed by How to Get Away With Murder, This Is Us, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Broad City. Chicago Fire, Chicago PD and Chicago Med also made the top 10, as did Stranger Things.

Republicans favored Grey’s Anatomy, How to Get Away With Murder, Supernatural, This Is Us and Criminal Minds. The Walking Dead, at No. 6, was the lone non-broadcast show on the GOP list. Roseanne came in at No. 71 among Democrats and No. 31 among Republicans.

Another E-Poll study showed viewers who are Democrats prefer shows that are “sexy, edgy, emotionally involving, ethnically diverse or have strong characters.” Republican viewers, for their part, like programs that are “family-friendly, funny, plot-driven or have storylines that involve ‘good vs. evil.’ ”

Everyone’s Invited

Similar to network executives, few showrunners will say they are targeting a certain section of the country. New ABC comedy The Kids Are Alright, which leads out of The Conners, shows a family of eight boys growing up with ultra-conservative parents in the early ’70s, against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and other social strife. “I haven’t thought, this is a red-state show, this is a blue-state show,” creator/showrunner Tim Doyle said. “I haven’t approached it as, I’m reaching out to this audience or that audience.”

Neal Baer, showrunner on drama Designated Survivor — which will premiere on Netflix after two seasons on ABC — said people are too complex to program to individually. “You have to be really careful about saying you’re going to pitch to this group or that group and how that affects your storytelling,” he said.

Network executives don’t love talking about red states and blue states watching their shows, either. After all, it’s entertainment, not cable news. Andy Kubitz, executive VP, programming strategy, ABC Entertainment, said Roseanne wasn’t so much about politics as it was about social issues, seen through the eyes of working-class folks.

“I don’t believe the Roseanne conversation has much to do with red state and blue state,” he said. “The first episode touched on politics, but the rest was about real issues in America that no one else is talking about on television.”

Among the broadcast rookies, FBI, which premiered Sept. 25, shows the inner workings of the bureau’s New York office. Last Man Standing started Sept. 28. Airing for six seasons on ABC before it moved to Fox, it’s about a politically conservative guy, played by Tim Allen, who works for a sporting goods chain. God Friended Me, which debuted Sept. 30, is about an atheist podcaster who is friended on social media by God.

If The Conners looks crafted for the heartland, NBC’s comedies, which include Will & Grace, whose reboot was birthed by a video the four cast members did about Trump weeks before the presidential election, are designed more for urban viewers. Pedowitz said CW hit Supernatural connects with a broad swath of the country, while Crazy Ex-Girlfriend appeals to niche viewers.

“We’re broadcasters — we’re designed to hit the whole country,” he said. “But within the whole country you’re going to hit pockets.”

The Murphy Brown reboot on CBS reaches out to both ends of the political spectrum. The premiere saw Brown, who comes out of retirement to host a cable news show, spar with President Trump on Twitter. It also featured a cameo from Hillary Clinton, who interviews to be Brown’s secretary. (“For four years I was the secretary of a very large organization,” said Clinton.)

Murphy Brown also features Brown’s son, Avery — recall that Dan Quayle derided Murphy Brown for “mocking the importance of fathers” for depicting a single mother back in 1992 — hosting his show on a rival conservative network, the Wolf Network, that features chats with regular Americans in coffee shops and bowling alleys.

Executive producer Steve Peterman, who also worked on the original show, told The New York Times the series came back because Trump is in the White House. “If Hillary Clinton was elected there’d be no artistic reason for this show to be on the air,” he said. “But because of the election, and because the position the press is now finding itself in, there were so many reasons for this show to come back.”

Yet the idea of creating a show based on what the country appears to be feeling and thinking doesn’t quite line up with the labor-intensive, time-consuming nature of producing television. Preston Beckman, former senior strategist at Fox and chairman of media consulting outfit The Beckman Group, mentions Fox brass meeting after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to focus on how best to program to the wounded nation, before deciding they’d never be able to react in time.

“You make decisions today and implement them one or two years down the road,” Beckman said. “Who knows where the country’s head could be then?”