Ratings Report: "Yellowstone" Shatters Records with Biggest Premiere Audience After 22-Month Hiatus

"Yellowstone" made a triumphant return on Sunday, drawing its largest-ever premiere audience following a lengthy 22-month break — and a fair share of off-screen drama. The Season 5B premiere of the contemporary Western captivated a staggering 16.4 million viewers, according to Paramount’s latest report, which cites data from VideoAmp's “projected Total Persons/Live+SD gross viewership across all cable networks and CBS broadcasts, including both premieres and encores.”

In an interesting shift, Paramount has been using VideoAmp for audience measurement due to an ongoing contract dispute with Nielsen. The company points out that while the Season 5A premiere in November 2022 was tracked across seven cable networks, this past Sunday’s premiere counted CBS and eight different cable channels, boosting its overall reach.