Somebody break out a guitar and a notebook, because it’s time to start writing a song of celebration. A song of recovery. A song of Nashville Season 5. Well, it’s only a temporary fill-in track at the moment, but if everything goes according to how fans would want things to go, then we may soon see Rayna and Teddy and at least some of the rest returning for another year on CMT, as the country music-tinged network is reportedly looking to build up the infancy of its scripted programming with a bona fide hit.
How much sense does this make? It’s the very outcome that I prophesized a few weeks back – using a crystal ball shaped like Hayden Panettiere’s head – because it’s the clearest solution imaginable. If Fox cancelled a show called The CBS Police Procedural Drama, there’s only one place that should go, right? And by the same (arguable) logic, the recently cancelled Nashville is a show that seemed destined for life at CMT.
Nothing is set in stone and the dotted lines are still unsigned, but there’s apparently a very real chance that the deal could go through in the next day so that the announcement could be made at the CMT Awards tomorrow night, according to Deadline. How awesome would that be for that crowd? On the flip side, though, the show was also shopped to Hulu and other outlets, so perhaps someone else could step in with a fantastic offer at the last minute.
Nashville was part of the massive deluge of cancellations from last month, and it was one of the most heavily contested exits, considering Season 4 ended on the giant cliffhanger that didn’t resolve Juliette’s plane going missing. The ending was a shrewd move by the creative team to keep interest in the show high enough for a potential pick-up on another network to happen, and it looks like it might have been the right move if this deal goes through.
CMT is currently getting all of its original programming ducks in a row. After years of driving music videos out of the lineup with reality shows about pawn shops and Steve Austin, the network will debut its second original comedy – the first was the short-lived Working Class back in 2011 – Still the King later this month, and in it we’ll see Billy Ray Cyrus playing an Elvis impersonator whose personal life goes haywire when he meets the 15-year-old daughter he never knew existed. CMT will also be the home of Mike & Molly star Billy Gardell’s next project in the form of the all-star musician drama Million Dollar Quartet.
Will another season (or more) of Nashville put CMT on the map as far as must-watch programming goes? Stay tuned for more info as it comes.
