‘Nashville’ season 5 renewal still possible despite lower ratings

Over the past few weeks, “Nashville” on ABC is one of the shows we’ve been the most worried about when it comes to getting canceled. The ratings have been less-than-stellar, the show has a large cast, and we can’t imagine getting most of the music ready is altogether cheap.

However, there is lucky some silver lining out there for fans. Here’s what the network’s own programming head in Paul Lee said (per Entertainment Weekly) while at the TCA Winter Press Tour over the weekend:

“We don’t have any plans to finish Nashville. We have an incredibly passionate audience. The Nashville audience grows by a large amount in our delay viewings. No, at this point, no plans for Nashville other than to keep it going.”

Could this change? Sure, but we feel like anytime you have a serialized story that is this far into its run, you owe it to fans to find a way to give them a proper ending. We could envision the show ending with a shortened final season in the future, or who knows? Maybe the DVR ratings and streams are enough out there to continue to make the series profitable for some time to come in the future. That’s the thing about analyzing TV shows in the modern era: It is so much more difficult to fully analyze where they stand when there are so many other things beyond just live+same day ratings that networks are looking at. They have more information, and as a result of that they can make a better decision.

For the record, we feel like “Nashville” is likely to return, but we’ll see where the ratings stand the rest of this season.

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