CMT Sets ‘Nashville’ Season Premiere Date
The hit country-music soap opera Nashville was dropped from its original home on ABC after the fourth season concluded last spring, but luckily for fans of Deacon, Rayna, Scarlett and the rest, the drama was quickly picked up and revived by CMT. The cable network has announced that Season 5 of Nashville will premiere Thursday, January 5th.
Filled with backstabbing power plays and true-to-life country performances, Nashville will kick off with a two-hour premiere, beginning at 9:00 p.m. ET. Twenty-two episodes are in the works, and in June it was reported that all cast members, with the exceptions of Will Chase (Luke Wheeler) and Aubrey Peeples (Layla Grant), will return.
After premiering on CMT, each show will be available for streaming on Hulu the following day. Season Four of Nashville pulled in about 8 million viewers per week, and ranked as one of TV’s most-DVR’d shows.
Along with the addition of Nashville, a slate of new series confirms that CMT is reacquainting itself with its music roots after years of unscripted reality programming. The tentatively titled Million Dollar Quartet will premiere sometime in March and tell the story of the birth of rock & roll through characters like Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jimmy Swaggart, Eddy Arnold and more.
Still the King, starring Billy Ray Cyrus as a washed-up former country star named Burnin’ Vernon Brown, returns for its second season next spring, centering on Cyrus’s character trying to turn his life around after discovering he has a daughter. The sitcom also stars Joey Lauren Adams and Madison Iseman.
Finally, the network has ordered a pilot episode of another potential music-related series called His Wives & Daughters, which is described as a comedic but ultimately mysterious look into “the eclectic and cunning wives and daughters of larger-than-life country music legend (and infamous womanizer) Eddie Ray Banks.”
Recently, CMT also announced the latest installment of its sublime musical mash-up series Crossroads. Set to air in December, the episode pairs Maren Morris with Alicia Keys.