‘Nashville’ Season 5 Premiere Lifts CMT Ratings

CMT saw a ratings pop for the premiere of its high-profile acquisition, country drama series Nashville. The Season 5 premiere Thursday night drew more than 1.2 million Live+same day viewers on CMT, the network’s most watched original premiere since 2012. The debut notched a .45 (A18-49), up nearly 300% from CMT’s primetime average.

Across three airings — two on CMT and an encore on sibling nick@nite, the fifth season opner averaged nearly two million viewers and a .77 rating in adults 18-49. That was off by 20% from the show’s Live+same day average for its fourth season on ABC and by a tenth from the drama’s Season 4 finale.

Nashville always has been a heavily time-shifted viewing series, so Live+same day numbers provide just a snapshot of its performance. However, evaluating Nashville’s full viewership may not be straight-forward. As part of the deal with Hulu, which is a partner on the series, Nashville is getting a next-day play on the streaming service. It is unclear whether its Live+3 ratings will include streaming data from Hulu or just DVR viewing on CMT.

On social, Nashville, which had a sneak on CMT in December, ranked as No. 1 on Nielsen Social Content ratings series & specials for the night, according to CMT. Its social aftershow Nashchat reached one million fans via a Facebook Live chat on CMT’s Facebook page.