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The return of “Yellowstone” on Sunday delivered the show’s biggest premiere night audience ever, Paramount said on Tuesday. Across cable and CBS airings, the Season 5 Part 2 debut drew 16.4 million viewers, according to projected data from VideoAmp.
The initial data includes CBS and eight cable networks that showed both the “Yellowstone” premiere and encores of it. A further breakdown will be available five to seven days after the original airing.
The Season 5 premiere, which aired in November 2022, reached 8.8 million viewers on Paramount Network, which was a 10% increase from the Season 4 premiere in November 2021. Across all four networks, the Season 5 premiere pulled in 10.3 million viewers compared to 9.5 for Season 4, which was an 8% increase.
The latest episode of “Yellowstone,” which picks up where Season 5 left off in January 2023, marks the series’ first episode without Kevin Costner, who led the Western drama as patriarch John Dutton for five and a half seasons. Costner departed from the show after scheduling conflicts with his film saga “Horizon” could not be resolved.
Costner said in an interview Monday morning that he hadn’t seen the episode and didn’t know how the show would write his character off until after it aired. “They’re pretty smart people,” Costner said of the “Yellowstone” writers, adding that how they dealt with Dutton was entirely “their business.”
He said of no longer being on the show, “It was difficult for them to keep their schedule. It seemed to be, it was just too difficult for them to do it.” He added: “I didn’t leave. I didn’t quit.”