The Parents Television Council is applauding Fox for dumping a show controversial for its explicit content and picking up another that's endearing to conservatives.
PTC president Tim Winter is happy the network is adding the family-friendly comedy Last Man Standing to its line-up. Winter explains they have been calling for this to happen for more than a year after ABC canceled the series (starring Tim Allen, pictured), despite the fact the ratings were good and – although not squeaky-clean – was one of the only family-friendly sitcoms on the network.
"And it was also perhaps the only show on ABC that really was appealing particularly to conservatives – to a conservative family audience," he tells OneNewsNow. "So we really scratched our heads when ABC made the decision to cancel."
Winter
Not only does he applaud Fox for picking up that comedy, he also is cheering Fox for canceling The Mick, an edgy sitcom that has featured explicit content during its two-season run. Again, PTC had taken Fox to task for the series for well over a year.
"It's the children who are doing the sexually provocative dialogue and the activities – drug use, drunkenness, and so forth – from the children," Winter explains.
"At a time when Hollywood proclaims how concerned they are about the #MeToo movement – about sexual exploitation of women and girls – they can't at the same time then produce television programing that asks us to laugh at it [and] at children who are engaged in sexual exploitation and so forth. You can't have it both ways."
The activist website OneMillionMoms.com had also been highly critical of The Mick since it began airing.
Winter believes the moves by Fox will offer a larger audience for the network and a family audience for advertisers. "[Last Man Standing] has a higher rating than The Mick, it has safer content, and therefore, the advertisers like it better," he stated a year ago. "And they actually would profit because it's a show that's produced under its own roof."