'Nashville' season 5 premiere brings in the ratings in CMT

"Nashville" has successfully come back for its fifth season following a very tumultuous road the show has traversed back in summer last year after ABC's shocking decision to ax the show from its regular programming.

Thanks to relentless fan clamor and presumably to folks working for the series behind the scenes, the country musical drama has found its new home with CMT. And just this week, "Nashville" proved that the broadcasting channel was not wrong in picking them up after the season premiere posed some impressive viewership numbers for the channel. In a report by Deadline, the first episode of the show's fifth season brought a whopping 1.2 million Live+same day viewers Thursday night. This is the network's most-watched original premiere since 2012 having nearly 300% increase from their usual primetime average. The numbers reported, however, still does not include the record from Hulu with which a deal for a next-day streaming service is being ensued. Needless to say, if these numbers are an indication, the team up between "Nashville" and CMT is shaping to be equally beneficial for both parties involved.

As for the narrative, arguably one of the biggest draws of the season 5 debut episode is for the reveal of Juliette's (Hayden Panettiere) fate. Season 4 of the country drama ended boldly on a cliffhanger leaving the popstar's whereabouts unknown after a supposed plane mishap. Hints about her survival may have been teased in the recent weeks as part of the marketing machine for the comeback but the fact of the matter is her future is still very much bleak given her paralysis. Meanwhile, Rayna (Connie Britton), on the other hand, faces a different kind of personal and business dilemma as her record studio seems to be sinking deeper and deeper into financial woes. The stresses in her current life prompt her to take a step back and evaluate herself while hopefully also trying to come up with something to solve her problems.

Moving forward, next week's installment titled "Let's Put It Back Together Again" airs this coming Thursday, Jan. 12, on CMT.