‘Yellowstone’ Draws in Millions in Broadcast Premiere

Yellowstone is now in its fifth and last season on Paramount Network, the first-ever episode of the show was shown on regular TV for the first time. It attracted 6.6 million viewers when it aired on CBS on Sunday night.

This is a big increase from the 2.8 million viewers that watched the episode when it first came out in 2018. But it’s not surprising because CBS has a bigger audience than the cable networks where Yellowstone used to air. Plus, Yellowstone has become very popular.

To compare, when Season 5 started on Paramount Network in November, it had 8.8 million viewers, and when it was shown on Country Music Television, TVLand, and Pop TV at the same time, it had 10.5 million viewers.

The Yellowstone episode on Sunday got a boost from the show “60 Minutes” that aired just before it and had 11.4 million viewers. The series will keep airing in order, with two episodes per week, except on NFL doubleheader nights when they will only show one episode.

CBS is showing Yellowstone and other shows from the Paramount family because of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. For Yellowstone, this decision makes sense. A Variety TV critic, Aramide Tinubu, wrote that the “new broadcast home is precisely where the massive and wildly entertaining epic should have been from the beginning.”

Yellowstone was the first series created by Taylor Sheridan for Paramount Global, and it has grown into a whole universe. There’s a prequel series called 1883 that started on Paramount+ in 2022, along with another prequel series called 1923, which is coming back for a second season.

Lawmen: Bass Reeves, a spinoff of 1883, will debut on Paramount+ in November, and 6666 is going to Paramount Network. There’s also 1944 in development as a sequel to 1923, and they’re working on another spinoff without a title yet.