Yellowstone Draws Strong Ratings in Broadcast Debut

The Dutton family made their way to the broadcast networks Sunday night, and it seems like the show will find new viewers wherever it airs.

TV Line reports that Yellowstone Season 1 Episode 1 got off the ground running with 6.6 million total viewers.

The numbers are awe-inspiring when considering the episode initially aired on Paramount Network in June 2018.

Episodes are also available to stream on Peacock, but it looks like many viewers were waiting for the Duttons to come to the broadcast networks before sampling the series.

CBS drafted in the Kevin Costner to shore up its fall schedule in response to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.

Many networks have had to call in different programming than usual due to little returning content.

Yellowstone launched out of the season premiere of 60 Minutes, which had 11.4 million total viewers.

Yellowstone and 60 Minutes were delayed by almost an hour from their planned start times due to NFL overrun.

Big Brother, which has been moved to the 10 p.m. slot on Sundays (and started at almost 11 p.m. ET!), had just 2.7 million viewers.

The decision to move the young-skewing reality TV series to such a late slot was questionable, and there’s a good chance it won’t stick for very long.

If Yellowstone holds up in the coming weeks, we wouldn’t be surprised if Big Brother’s Sunday airings moved to a new night.

Over on NBC, Sunday Night Football led the way with 14.4 million viewers and a 4.4 rating in the demo, numbers that are unheard of in today’s TV climate.

Over on The CW, The Chosen continued with 350,000 viewers and a 0.0 rating.

The numbers may not sound like much, but the show has already aired on streaming in the U.S., so there’s a good chance it wasn’t expensive to acquire.

What are your thoughts on the TV ratings?

Hit the comments below.

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Paul Dailly is the Associate Editor for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter.