Don’t put dirt on Nashville‘s grave just yet. The ABC series, which stars Connie Britton and Hayden Panettiere, was cancelled a few weeks ago shortly before the finale aired on May 25th. It has been confirmed that a deal with CMT is in the works and a decision to give the show a fifth season should be announced soon.
This is exciting news for Nashville fans, especially considering the cliff-hanger series finale. It appeared that Juliette and Avery were going to rekindle their relationship when Juliette’s plane disappeared. Lionsgate Television, which produces the show, decided to air this as a series finale in hopes of the drama being picked up by another network. Another alternate ending was filmed that showed Juliette and Avery sharing a happy moment together, but Lionsgate thought leaving the fate of one of the main characters would cause more interest from networks to renew Nashville.
Though the ratings for Nashville were never very stellar (season 4 averaged 6.21 million viewers), those numbers are much higher than CMT has ever had for an original series. Other potential homes for the series included Hulu, Lifetime, Bravo, and E!. However, CMT already has syndication rights to Nashville‘s first three seasons. Also, the country draw from the network makes it a perfect home for the series.
Nashville‘s pickup from CMT could be announced as early as tomorrow. The CMT Awards air and what better way to announce the renewal than during one of the most watched events on the cable network? The one area of concern related to the renewal of Nashville is stacking rights, which are rights to all episodes of a TV show. TV networks generally only have rights to the last five episodes to air, while outlets like Hulu can stream entire seasons of a series.
Are you excited about the possible renewal of Nashville? Let us know in the comments section below.
Photo by: ABC
Follow Us
