When Season 5 of Nashville kicks off on Jan. 5, it's not just the network that will be new. Along with lots of new faces, viewers should expect less talking and more singing.

Marshall Herskovitz, along with his business partner Ed Zwick, is taking over as Nashville showrunner for the TV drama's upcoming fifth season, and he promises that with the move to CMT, the show will focus more on the music and less on the drama.

"To tell you the truth, I'm happier to be on CMT," Herskovitz says in a backstage video for TV Line, adding that what made Nashville so attractive to him wasn't the drama, but the deep characters and music.

"It had these amazing characters -- really, really strong characters," Herskovitz explains. "And the music ... the idea of doing a show that has music as an integral part of it -- it was just such a fascinating challenge for me!"

In fact, Herskovitz loves the music so much that he says the first thing he and Zwick did when they took over Nashville was to shorten its scripts so that the music could be even more central to each episode. A big fan of traditional country music and bluegrass, Herskovitz wants to focus on Music City's musical diversity: "Nashville is the crossroads of the entire music world, not just country music," he notes.

Herskovitz's desire for other kinds of music is right in line with Nashville's new character additions. He also says that authentic relationships will become more central to the show's storyline, rather than always trying to up the drama.

"What I saw in the show was these bones of deep connections between these people, and that's what we wanted to play up," he notes. "To me, the heart of the show was the relationships and the love these people have for each other."

Herskovitz adds that it is important to him to highlight "the depth and the complexity of the relationships instead of just feeling you needed to have incident piling on incident," and says that Nashville's cast and creator, Callie Khouri, have embraced the changes.

Season 5 of Nashville will begin with a special two-hour premiere on Jan. 5 at 9PM ET. The show will air on CMT and also stream on Hulu and CMT.com.

Country Stars Who Have Acted in TV Shows and Movies

More From 101.5 KNUE