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Buoyed by strong ratings and renewed brand interest, CMT has renewed Nashville for a 16-episode sixth season. That’s great news for #Nashies. Also, great news? We have a mid-season premiere date for the network’s high-rated and most-watched series! Nashville returns for its mid-season premiere on Thursday, June 1 at 9 PM/ET.
The announcement was first made by stars Charles Esten (Deacon) and Hayden Panettiere in a Facebook Live broadcast.
When Nashville returns for its midseason premiere on June 1, the story picks up 10 weeks after the events that unfolded in the midseason finale. Deacon helps Daphne with a school project, but Daphne feels unmotivated. Juliette gives Maddie unsolicited advice about a song. Scarlett and Gunnar receive news about the baby. For a preview from Marshall Herskovitz, executive producer and show runner, click here.
The cast will be getting a bit of a shakeup for the second half of Season 5 as well. Rachel Bilson (The OC, Hart of Dixie) and Kaitlin Doubleday (Empire) will join the series in the second half of season five. In addition, fresh off the success of Big Little Lies, Jeff Nordling will recur in the role of Brad Maitland, an extremely successful, charming, egotistical, narcissistic owner of the most successful record label in Nashville.
Nashville ranks as the network’s highest-rated and most-watched show in the network’s history, averaging 2.1M weekly viewers (L+7). Over the course of the first-half of the season, the series notched nearly 16 million total viewers on CMT alone, and nearly 23 million on CMT and Nick at Nite. The news comes on the heels of strong growth for CMT. Original premieres are pacing up 51% among A 18-49 and 79% among W 18-49 versus year ago. Total day ratings are up 19% with A 18-49 and 25% with W 18-49. As a result, CMT garnered the biggest year-over-year growth this quarter than any other top 50 channel on cable (excluding news nets).
Nashville stars Hayden Panettiere as Juliette Barnes, Clare Bowen as Scarlett O’Connor, Chris Carmack as Will Lexington, Charles Esten as Deacon Claybourne, Jonathan Jackson as Avery Barkley, Sam Palladio as Gunnar Scott, Maisy Stella as Daphne Conrad and Lennon Stella as Maddie Conrad. In addition, this season features Joseph David-Jones as Clay, Rhiannon Giddens as Hallie Jordan and Cameron Scoggins as Zach Welles in recurring roles.
The series is executive produced by Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick (the creators of Thirtysomething), Steve Buchanan and Callie Khouri.
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