Why ‘Yellowstone’ Changed Nights

Fans know to expect an action-packed Sunday night thanks to Yellowstone, which premiered on the Paramount Network in 2018. While the show now airs on Sundays, it originally found a home on Wednesday nights. Recently, The Wall Street Journal shed some insight about why the network decided to move Yellowstone to a new night. 

Chris McCarthy, the president and chief executive of ViacomCBS Media Networks, made some major changes to Yellowstone when he took oversight of the production in 2019. Instead of canceling the series, McCarthy took action in order to make sure that it grew. Part of the show’s growth plan was moving the show to Sunday. For Season 3, Yellowstone began airing on Sundays so that it was on a night that viewers associate with prestige television, following a lead from HBO and Showtime. 

“We needed to do things that would signal that the show has coastal appeal,” McCarthy said. “It’s a misconception to think you can only play to the coasts or the center. The question is: How do you play to both?” Yellowstone has seen a remarkable rise in popularity since its humble beginnings. That popularity and success even led to a major pay increase for star Kevin Costner. When he initially signed on for the project, he was making $500,000 per episode for Season 1. He was later able to re-negotiate and earned $1.2 million per episode for Season 4, which wrapped this past January. That figure will reportedly grow for Season 5, as Costner is set to re-negotiate again. He stands to also get an overhead deal in exchange for negotiating for future seasons. 

While Yellowstone has only grown in popularity over the years, the show originally didn’t attract much attention when it was being shopped around to various networks. In Matt Belloni’s Puck newsletter, he wrote that Netflix, FX and TNT all passed on the show when it was being shopped around. As for the reasons why Yellowstone didn’t garner much attention originally, Belloni reported that the genre, lack of international value, and the show’s target audience all played into it. Additionally, the show’s $80 million production budget meant that it was “too expensive” for broadcast television. Alas, the show eventually found its home on Paramount Network, which it airs on to this day.