‘Yellowstone’ Hits All-Time Ratings High With Season 5 Return

It’s not quite “Who shot J.R.?,” but the premiere audience for the long-anticipated return of Yellowstone to Paramount Network was pretty huge.

Over multiple airings Sunday night — including two eight-network simulcasts and a showing on CBS — the episode that revealed the fate of Kevin Costner’s John Dutton brought in 16.4 million viewers, the largest first-night audience in the show’s history. That figure from analytics company VideoAmp (Paramount Global’s current ratings provider, as the company is in a contract dispute with Nielsen) also includes three additional repeats on Paramount Network and CMT in the wee hours of Monday morning.

Sunday’s audience comes in a little bit ahead of the season five premiere in November 2022, which set a then-record for Yellowstone with 15.9 million viewers, per VideoAmp (Nielsen had that episode at 12.1 million same-day viewers.) The November 2022 premiere had only one simulcast airing, across seven channels rather than eight, and didn’t show up at all on CBS.

The VideoAmp numbers don’t include streaming — nor could they, as Yellowstone doesn’t have a night-of or next-day streaming home. Prior seasons are on Peacock as part of a years-old licensing deal that also precludes new episodes from showing up on Paramount Network’s corporate sibling Paramount+ after they air.

Sunday’s episode was simulcast on CMT, Comedy Central, MTV, MTV2, Logo, Pop and TV Land in addition to Paramount Network for its first airing and an encore at 11:15 p.m. ET. CBS aired it at 10 p.m. ET, in between the two simulcast showings.

VideoAmp’s breakdown of Sunday’s audience by network and time will be available in several days. Nielsen figures (which may not match VideoAmp’s) will likely be available later Tuesday or Wednesday.