It’s not easy finding a new home for a beloved-but-cancelled show. Licensing deals, production contracts, and the endlessly fiddly jigsaw puzzle of matching a series’ built-in audience with a network’s pre-existing demographics: It’s an incredibly complex problem. Unless, apparently, you’re country-music-loving soap opera Nashville, which is closing in on a deal to be picked up by the country-music-loving folks at CMT.
Variety is reporting that the producers of the former ABC show are nearing a deal that would renew the series for a fifth season on the cable network. If picked up, it’ll join a line-up that includes reality shows like Guntucky and Steve Austin’s Broken Skull Challenge, and more reruns of Reba than you can shake a polecat at under a warm, Kentucky moon. (Authentic countryfied gibberish courtesy of us just making some up.)
Nashville is produced by Lionsgate TV. They’ve been shopping around the popular series—which stars Connie Britton and Hayden Panettiere as luminaries of the modern country scene—since it was cancelled by ABC last month. Meanwhile, in fake news, the producers of The Muppets are attempting to sell their similarly ended series to The Network For Beloved Puppet Characters That Now Make A Lot Of Jokes About Interspecies Sex (or TNFBPCTNMALOJAIS).