Just a reminder that Paramount's Yellowstone streams on NBC’s Peacock, not Paramount Plus

It's surprisingly hard to watch Yellowstone these days

By Matt Schimkowitz  |  November 10, 2021 | 1:49am
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Just a reminder that Paramount's Yellowstone streams on NBC’s Peacock, not Paramount Plus
Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan and Kevin Costner Photo: Frazer Harrison (Getty Images for Paramount Network)

Step aside, FX, FXM, FXX, and FX on Hulu, there’s a new overly complicated streaming mess to clean up.

Have you tried to watch Yellowstone recently? Maybe you’re not one of the 8 million people who watched the two-hour premiere on Sunday, and you want to catch up. Where do you think you can stream the Paramount Network’s most popular show? If you guessed Paramount+, you’re wrong…dead wrong. Well, maybe not that bad.

Paramount’s cowboy family drama is surprisingly tricky to find, a casualty of the culture of streaming services and the cable networks that own them, who, despite the overemphasis on consistent branding, refuse to brand things properly.8

Yellowstone airs on Paramount Network. But if you want to watch the show because you’re sick with Yellowstone FOMO, you won’t find it on Paramount+. Instead, you’ll find the first three seasons of Yellowstone on Peacock, its exclusive streamer.

But wait, that’s not all. Being the exclusive streamer of the first three seasons of Yellowstone, Peacock’s not going to give that away for free. You must first subscribe to Peacock’s premium packages, Peacock Premium or Peacock Premium Plus. We can only imagine what horrors wait behind that Plus.

As for season four, you can only stream those by logging on to the Paramount Network website. Enjoy the season premiere for free, but any more is going to cost you some serious dough. Or, you’ll have to pop in your cable provider login information. Whichever comes first.

So how did this happen? Why the heck is this show so hard to watch?

Approximately 905 years ago, in January 2020, NBCUniversal picked up the streaming rights to Yellowstone, despite the series airing on the Paramount Network. Now, before you get up out of your chair and scream, “Well, why would they go and do a thing like that?” you have to remember that this was a simpler time. This was a pre-Paramount+ era and pre-Peacock era (Precock era?). Paramount could not have predicted that people would want to stream a television show in January 2020.

If you think about it, what other choice did Paramount have? They could either sell the streaming rights to NBCU or dump the show on CBS All Access, where Yellowstone would never be heard from again. They couldn’t let Yellowstone become the Twilight Zone reboot or, worse, The Stand, could they?

As a result, the first three seasons of Yellowstone can be found on Peacock, which we guess you’ll finally have to pony up for if you want to watch Kevin Costner protect the largest ranch in America.

Anyway, this was your reminder that Yellowstone airs on the Paramount Network, and the show’s first three seasons stream exclusively on Peacock. Thank you for your time.

 
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