It was reported in January 2007 that Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton were in talks to lead the cast of the series, originally titled Action News, which only had a script commitment with 20th Century Fox Television at the time.

[11] The script was reportedly a hot commodity with numerous networks interested before Fox outbid the competition and gave it a blind thirteen-episode commitment in February 2007.

[16] The show aired on Wednesday nights at 8:30/7:30c on Fox, leading out 'Til Death, which features Heaton's former Everybody Loves Raymond co-star, Brad Garrett.

[19] After the first two leads were found, Paul Campbell and Aimee Garcia were originally cast as Ryan Church and Montana Diaz Herrera respectively in February 2007 but the roles were re-cast in April 2007 with Josh Gad and Ayda Field replacing them.

[20] Casting continued throughout March with Ty Burrell and Laura Marano landing the last two regular spots in the series.

[21][22] There was also talk of casting Sung Hi Lee in a recurring role as Chuck Darling's love interest, but the producers decided in April to go in a different direction.

The background used for Ayda Field's credit in the title sequence, a weather map of the United States, was still briefly shown but her image was replaced by a silhouette of a man.

However, Grammer was already searching for a new show and ABC had given him some new projects (one was an overseas remake of Roman's Empire, which failed to pick up, and Hank, which premiered Fall 2009, but was cancelled after five episodes).

When originally pitching their show, Lloyd & Levitan never offered Modern Family to Fox because of their issues dealing with that network over Back to You.

[28] The episode "Something's Up There" (aired November 14, 2007) involved Marsh trying to convince the show's lone Polish-American character, Gary, to go bowling after work by saying: "Come on, it's in your blood, like kielbasa and collaborating with the Nazis."