Yesterday, ABC dropped the axe on Nashville, its critically beloved look at the world of country music, and Connie Britton’s ongoing role in trying to make us care about what happens within it. But it’s a noted truism that in 2016, “canceled” doesn’t always mean “canceled,” with the show’s production studio, Lionsgate TV, asserting that it’s going to try to shop the series around for a potential fifth season somewhere else.
Lionsgate didn’t offer any other information, but it’s presumably talking to the usual online culprits, Hulu and Netflix. The streaming companies both have a history of picking up shows that other networks have had to toss aside, provided they won’t take a bath on the deal. Nashville had just recently signed on a new set of showrunners, suggesting that Lionsgate was pretty high on its creative possibilities moving forward, so they might be pretty enthusiastic about getting it set up somewhere else. We’ll have to wait and see whether the show’s May 25 season finale—reportedly a cliffhanger, so that’s fun—will still be its ultimate end.