Yellowstone 1883 Is Already Breaking Records
Yellowstone 1883 is already smashing ratings records!
This article is more than 2 years old
The prequel to Yellowstone, known as Yellowstone 1883, is breaking viewership records. Between its premiere on the Paramount Network and its simulcast on CMT, 1883‘s inaugural episode logged 6.4 million watches throughout the United States, making it the biggest premiere on cable in the last six years. The only other show that has beaten 1883, was when Fear the Walking Dead premiered to more than 10 million viewers back in 2015. Yellowstone has been one of the most talked-about shows in recent memory, with fans claiming that it’s a “cowboy Game of Thrones.” Complex storylines are always welcomed.
Most streaming services don’t release their viewership records, but since Paramount+ is the sister company for ViacomCBS, they are allowed to release the Nielsen ratings. Nielsen ratings are a system for accounting for how much viewership a television series gets. The Yellowstone 1883 series premiere smashed through the actual premiere of the original Yellowstone, which only had 2.83 million viewers back in 2018. Word travels fast, as the new prequel series is destroying records.
Even though the original Yellowstone‘s first three seasons have their home with Peacock, Yellowstone 1883 has premiered on Paramount+ and is likely to remain on that streaming service from here on out. It might be possible for Peacock and Paramount+ to strike a deal to bring both series over to one of the streaming services and not both. The 1883 premiere also was simulcast on the CMT, likely due to both Faith Hill and Tim McGraw being the main husband and wife in this new thrilling chapter. CMT accounted for another 600,000 viewers in the Nielsen ratings.
The new Yellowstone 1883 series boasts a star-studded cast that includes Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Sam Elliott, and Isabel May. It makes all the sense in the world to give Yellowstone fans a TV series based on the Wild West to show them how the current status quo in the home series came to be. The landscape of the US was unforgiving and unexplored in those days, so having someone like Sam Elliott (of Tombstone fame) show folks how to survive is just fine by us.
The Yellowstone series came out in 2018 and is currently in its fourth season. In that short amount of time, the series has now garnered a spin-off prequel series in Yellowstone 1883. That is some incredible growth considering most series don’t get spin-offs until they are completed. Game of Thrones ended in 2019 and its spin-off isn’t set to premiere until 2022.
More and more streaming services are beginning to create world-renowned content that will make it even more difficult not to buy into the cavalcade of services these days. It will be that much more difficult not to fall into the craze of a show that is being talked about by everyone. With stars like Kevin Costner and Sam Elliott showing the world the cowboy way again, it will be hard not to want to find a way to binge Yellowstone and the new Yellowstone 1883 prequel.
