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Based on the stand-up comedy of Tim Allen, Home Improvement made its debut on ABC on September 17, 1991, and was one of the highest-rated sitcoms for almost the entire decade (It even went up to #1 during the 1993-1994 season; that year, Allen also had the #1 book ("Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man") and movie (The Santa Clause)) Midway throughout the show's run, it was also competed against another highly-rated sitcom, Frasier, which slightly dropped the ratings, however, it remained a top 10 show. The final episode aired on May 25, 1999 with a 90-minute, three-part episode entitled "The Long and Winding Road," which was the fourth highest rated comedy series finale of the 1990s, behind Cheers, The Cosby Show and Seinfeld. Since 1995, due to its popularity, reruns began airing on The Disney Channel and Channel 4 and ABC1 in the UK. At the present time, old episodes are currently on national syndication and on cable television network such as TBS in the U.S., the Seven Network and FOX Classics in Australia, Sab Tv in India and although it stopped airing in the UK due to ABC1 ceasing transmission on 26th September, on 28th July 2008 it restarted from the pilot episode on Virgin 1. In America, it has begun airing on Nick at Nite in 2007. In Canada, it has began airing on CMT.

In Germany, Home Improvement was shown on ARD, RTL, VOX, and reruns are currently shown on the private channels RTL 2 and Super RTL. It was also shown on M-Net on South African television, and reruns are showing throughout 2007 on the M-Net Series channel, available to DStv users. In 2007, with the DVD release of Tim Allen's two stand-up specials, he said that Home Improvement was supposed to be a parody of This Old House, where the host does almost nothing and the co-host (Al in this case, Norm on This Old House) does all the work.