Well folks, we are officially in the new age of Last Man Standing. Friday night, Mike Baxter and company emerged from their network-imposed slumber to deliver the chuckles unto us once again. You might wonder how many people tuned in for this most bodacious Tim Allen gem.

Well, you're gonna like this:

Tim Allen’s sitcom, “Last Man Standing,” starring the comedian as the openly conservative Mike Baxter, started its seventh season on a new network — Fox — with very strong ratings. Indeed, it was the top-rated show of Friday night.

The show scored a 1.8 rating among adults 18-49, along with 8.01 million viewers, The Hollywood Reporter wrote; the sitcom’s final season on ABC in 2016-17 averaged a 1.2 and 6.41 million viewers in same-day ratings.

Variety reported that the show was Fox’s most watched comedy on any night in nearly seven years.

Talk about a major success.

Now, compare this to the premiere of the craptastic Murphy Brown revival on Thursday. Not even an appearance from the pantsuited she-beast of our nightmares was enough to save it.

Murphy Brown returned to TV after 20 years off the air only to rank as CBS’ lowest-rated Thursday night comedy.

The heavily buzzed 9:30 p.m. premiere (which included a surprise Hillary Clinton cameo) was watched by 7.4 million viewers and had a 1.1 rating among adults 18-49 — the softest of the network’s two-hour comedy block.

The lesson here: People like variety. Shows about lefties being lefties and farting all over everything conservative doesn't really make for original programming these days. On the other hand, a show that portrays someone to the right of Stalin as something other than a walking punchline is a breath of fresh air. Which is why shows like Roseanne and Last Man Standing fare so well in the ratings department.

Here's looking at many more years of laughs with the Baxter clan.

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