There May Be A Fifth Season Of Nashville After All

Lionsgate doesn't seem content to let Nashville go gently into that good night. The studio will shop the show to other outlets, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The show will hit its 100th episode should it be picked up for a fifth season. Season four has two episodes left, with the finale reportedly set to end on a major cliffhanger. 100 episodes is typically the cutoff for serialization, though cable rights have already been sold to AXS TV and SVOD rights have gone to Hulu. Hulu's involvement in particular is interesting, given that it recently saved The Mindy Project from cancellation at Fox. The track record for shows switching networks has been mixed to say the least, but we'd like to see the show exit on its own terms.

In a shocking move, ABC has cancelled Nashville. The drama, which starred Connie Britton and Hayden Panettiere, centered on the trials and tribulations of country music stardom in the capital of the genre. ABC had previously tapped new showrunners, Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick of My So-Called Life, to head up the fifth season. But today they decided they’d had enough. During its current and now-final season, Nashville averaged 6.3 million viewers, including a 1.7 rating among adults 18-49. Those aren’t exactly blockbuster numbers. The show had seemed set to run almost indefinitely. Instead it’s coming to a crashing halt. Perhaps coincidentally, star Hayden Panettiere tweeted a message about needing to focus on holistically healing herself in hopes of ameliorating her postpartum depression. She’s been vocal about her struggle with the condition in the past, so it’s not exactly coming out of left field.