‘Yellowstone’ Return To Paramount Network Yields Record Viewership

deadline.com:

Millions of people couldn’t wait to see how Taylor Sheridan addressed the departure of Kevin Costner, it seems: Sunday night’s return of Yellowstone delivered the biggest premiere night audience ever with 16.4M viewers.

Still locked in a battle with Nielsen, Paramount Network is instead relying on data from the analytics outfit VideoAmp that looked at projected Total Persons/Live+SD gross viewership across all cable network and CBS airings.

According to those results, season 5B of the drama is up 3 percent versus the season 5A premiere in 2022 (16.4M vs. 15.9M). The 2022 season 5A premiere/encores included seven cable networks while the 2024 premiere/encores include CBS and eight cable networks.

The Sunday night episode quickly answered the fate of Costner’s John Dutton; he was found dead by a fatal gunshot wound. The initial thought was that he died of suicide, until viewers learned that a certain vixen played by Dawn Olivieri was just carrying out what Jamie (Wes Bentley) thought he wanted.