Yellowstone is, by far, the Paramount Community’s largest hit. It is also one of many largest hits on cable tv, bar none. The season 3 cliffhanger finale in 2020 drew the largest viewers of any scripted TV present on cable that yr, with 7.6 million viewers watching it. The season 4 premiere in November on the Paramount Community practically doubled that, with 14.7 million viewers.
So the Paramount Plus streaming service would appear just like the pure place to show for anybody hoping to stream the present. However counterintuitively, the one present most related to the Paramount title is nowhere to be discovered on Paramount Plus.
If you wish to watch Yellowstone’s newest season — season 4 — on a streaming service, it is on rival service Peacock. If you wish to binge Yellowstone’s again catalog, you possibly can both watch it on Peacock, which has an unique deal to be the one subscription service streaming Yellowstone, or you possibly can attempt to unlock the Paramount Community app. However you will not discover it on Paramount Plus.
As complicated as that’s, it is considerably by design. Yellowstone is not the one high-profile Paramount title lacking from Paramount Plus streaming service: In the event you’re in search of Comedy Central’s South Park, for instance, it’s essential to try HBO Max.
Content material licensing is a giant enterprise for Paramount, and so is the income generated by having successful present on a conventional cable community like Paramount Community. Paramount positioned a wager that some top-shelf packages may very well be extra worthwhile — and attain extra eyeballs — in the event that they’re obtainable someplace apart from Paramount Plus, even when it means a giant Paramount present like Yellowstone is not on Paramount Plus in any respect. (On reflection, taht could could have been an epically unhealthy wager.)
Like the remainder within the parade of recent streaming providers — together with Disney Plus, HBO Max, Apple TV Plus, Peacock and Discovery Plus — Paramount Plus hopes its personal specific concoction of TV and flicks will hook you by itself imaginative and prescient for TV’s future. However byzantine licensing offers like Yellowstone’s underscore that even when a service like Paramount Plus rallies round its personal content material, that does not essentially make it less complicated so that you can discover and watch your favourite exhibits and flicks on-line.
The place you possibly can and might’t stream Yellowstone
The primary distinction to know is that Paramount Plus is totally different from Paramount Community. Whereas Paramount Plus is a subscription streaming service, Paramount Community is a conventional cable channel obtainable to individuals who pay for it by way of a live-TV supplier. Paramount Community is the place Yellowstone’s fourth season (and all its seasons) had been first launched.
The second distinction to know is that Peacock is the one subscription streaming service with Yellowstone, interval.
On Paramount Plus, you possibly can’t stream Yellowstone — previous episodes or new ones — in any respect.
Paramount Community
If you wish to stream any episodes from Yellowstone, the primary place they’re obtainable is on the Paramount Community’s channel, web site or app. The fourth season of Yellowstone streams just for “authenticated” on-line viewers — that’s, individuals who can log in with their live-TV service’s credentials to show they’re already paying for Paramount Community.
One exception: Paramount put the premiere episode of Yellowstone’s fourth season exterior its paywall, so anyone is ready to stream this episode — titled Half the Cash — free on Paramount Community’s app or web site.
Paramount Community’s exhibits and flicks, together with each Yellowstone episode, can be found to stream on the internet at paramountnetwork.com or its Paramount Community app. However to be an “authenticated” viewer, you should be paying for the channel already with a live-TV subscription, reminiscent of cable, satellite tv for pc or a live-channel streaming service like YouTube TV or Philo. ( Philo is without doubt one of the most cost-effective on-line choices to get entry to Paramount Community; it additionally presents a weeklong free trial.)
Peacock
The fourth season of Yellowstone has been added to Peacock’s library, alongside the primary three seasons which were obtainable there since Peacock launched in 2020. Each episode of Yellowstone, besides the premiere of season 1, is paywalled. To look at any episode on Peacock other than that very first one, you should be on one in all its paid subscription tiers that usually price $5 or $10 a month.
Pluto TV (however you already missed it…)
Pluto TV is a distinct sort of streaming service from these others. It is free for anybody to observe with promoting with none registration required. And whereas it has a library of exhibits and flicks you possibly can watch on demand, the muse of Pluto TV is pseudo-live “channels” that play programming in a single unstoppable stream, simply as should you turned on conventional TV and began flipping round totally different networks.
Pluto TV basically ran a Yellowstone marathon of the present’s first three seasons throughout one weekend in March. Pluto’s Extra TV Drama channel streamed Yellowstone’s first season on a Friday, its second season on a Saturday and its third on a Sunday. However should you caught it on Pluto, you had no management over what you had been watching: You could not pause, rewind, skip or in any other case choose which episode you needed to on demand.
Pluto TV, which can be owned by Paramount, stated that Yellowstone will not be a part of its on-demand library. In the event you missed the marathon this weekend, Pluto stated the present can be streaming once more later this yr — however did not specify when.
Paramount Plus
So if Paramount Plus would not have Yellowstone itself, what does it have? Spinoffs. On Dec. 19, Paramount Plus started streaming a prequel titled 1883, which focuses on the Dutton household greater than a century in the past as they transfer west and set up the Yellowstone Ranch. One other spinoff, titled 1932, can be coming to the service too. And Paramount has ordered an entire secure of exhibits both associated to Yellowstone or produced by Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan.
Why Yellowstone would not stream the one place you’d anticipate
Each new streaming service launching out of Hollywood makes its personal judgment about how a lot programming to maintain for itself. Some streaming providers have been aggressive in getting their titles again to their very own providers.
Disney has been agency in letting its offers expire for something it beforehand licensed out to different providers. That included a serious deal that allow Netflix stream Disney’s theatrical motion pictures for an estimated $200 million to $300 million a yr over 4 years. However Disney Plus needed to change into a dependable hub for its personal catalog, so Disney let that Netflix deal run out and stopped procuring these blockbusters to rival providers.
NBCUniversal, along with licensing Yellowstone for its Peacock service, gained the rights to its personal present The Workplace again from Netflix firstly of 2021 so Peacock may stream the sitcom solely.
And WarnerMedia’s HBO Max has repeatedly clawed again rights to all eight Harry Potter motion pictures from NBCUniversal and Peacock. WarnerMedia’s Warner Bros. licensed all these motion pictures to NBCUniversal years in the past in an epic deal. That put NBCUniversal’s Peacock in line to stream them quite than HBO Max. However WarnerMedia has snagged them again repeatedly, in an effort to spice up HBO Max with a preferred franchise.
Paramount Plus, nevertheless, has been far more prepared to license its prime titles elsewhere.
A part of the reason being that licensing out titles is usually a profitable enterprise. Final yr, Paramount made $5.6 billion in income from licensing, practically 1 / 4 of the corporate’s complete. That cash comes from an array of licenses, from TV syndication to Paw Patrol stuffed animals and costumes. However a part of additionally it is farming out titles like Yellowstone, South Park and others to Paramount Plus’ direct rivals. Once you grant your individual programming to your individual service solely, you forsake cash you might’ve hauled in should you’d licensed it to another person.
And Paramount has a giant again catalog to faucet into: roughly 140,000 TV episodes and 4,000 movies. The corporate would not need all that on Paramount Plus.
“We will not preserve all that for ourself. It would not make sense,” CEO Bob Bakish stated final yr, as Paramount Plus was making ready for launch. “It is an excessive amount of.”
Bakish has repeatedly stated the corporate’s technique is “evolving” when it comes to how a lot of its personal programming it ought to license and the way a lot it ought to preserve for itself. The corporate’s licensing technique has “shifted to change into far more targeted” on having its personal franchises by itself streaming service, he stated in November. However the “legacy offers” the corporate struck earlier than the launch of Paramount Plus can have a protracted tail, he added. In February, Bakish stated it was “unlucky” to strike a Yellowstone licensing take care of Peacock within the midst of closing a serious merger.
Nevertheless, past the cash Paramount makes by licensing, Paramount Plus additionally believed it would have the ability to draw in additional new members if it let different, larger providers have a few of its titles to stream. Bakish has famous that different platforms can increase the viewers for an older present in order that its reboots and spinoffs have a much bigger fan base for Paramount Plus.
It is a perverse kind of logic. However Netflix has greater than 221 million members worldwide, versus Paramount Plus’ 33 million. Curiosity in Avatar: The Final Airbender surged in 2020 when the present hit Netflix, definitely serving to encourage ViacomCBS’ 2021 choice to launch a complete new studio devoted to recent Avatar-related programming.
Sadly, Paramount is not gaining attain for Yellowstone by having it on Peacock. Peacock is even smaller than Paramount Plus: It had 24.5 month energetic accounts on the finish of 2021, with solely about 16 million of these on a paid tier that unlocks Yellowstone.
Most lately, Paramount has began reuniting a few of its main franchises with its personal streaming service. South Park is slowly untangling from HBO Max to make its method Paramount Plus, the corporate stated in February. In 2024, new South Park episodes could have their streaming premieres on Paramount Plus quite than on HBO Max. Then in 2025, Paramount Plus will get the total back-catalog of South Park within the US.
However thus far, Paramount has been silent about clawing again the rights to Yellowstone.
That implies that for brand spanking new followers of any of the Yellowstone prequels on Paramount Plus, as they watch the chronicles of the Dutton household’s arrival in Montana and their evolution into ranching titans, Paramount Plus subscribers have to go elsewhere to determine who the Duttons even are.
