Why Does Yellowstone Resonate with the Baby Boomer Generation?
Since 2018, Yellowstone has made a cultural impact on television in both the streaming era and the world of cable television. It’s become the flagship show of CBS and the Paramount Network about the Dutton family that controls the largest cattle ranch in the United States. A ranch that is always in conflict with some sort of outside force in the show. It’s definitely earned its reputation as a drama for the ages. But for a second, let’s just look at the elephant in the room in regard to Yellowstone. Have you ever noticed its fan base?
Yellowstone rakes in big numbers; some are your average working-class Americans with nine-to-fives and a HOA meeting they need to attend once a month. However, the numbers alone prove that Yellowstone’s core audience is none other than the baby boomer generation. Now there are multiple reasons for that; some of it can be deemed political, and some of it can just be looked at in terms of what the culture of the baby boomer generation is. So let’s take a look.
Kevin Costner Is an Icon of that Generation
Hey Millennials, there’s a movie that a lot of your Boomer parents like; it’s called The Big Chill. In it, old friends get together and rekindle their connections with one another, and this all happens around the suicide of one of their friends named Alex, who was played by Kevin Costner. Now, Costner’s few scenes were cut from the movie, but oddly, after the release of The Big Chill, his career began to skyrocket.
At 68 years of age now, no matter if you like his movies or not, the man who now stars in the Green Mountain coffee commercials has really been one of the bigger movie stars of the boomer generation from the early 1980s until the birth of Yellowstone. Costner is a natural-born movie star who feels like a slice of wholesome Americana. Something baby boomers can relate to.
It Might be ‘Anti-Woke”
The keywords here are “might be.” Nobody is trying to ruffle any feathers here. It’s just been news for a few years now that Yellowstone does kind of cater to the crowd that doesn’t believe in highly progressive ideals. Show creator Taylor Sheridan has pushed back against claims that it is “the red state Game of Thrones'”. He went on to mention that “the show actually explores the gentrification of the west, the displacement of Native Americans, and the way Native American women were treated.” So you can decide on it. Yellowstone does bring a very rough-neck kind of vibe to it to match the lifestyle of the characters. Like gritty cop dramas, you’re not going to hear or see anything P.C., and once again, who grew up on that kind of stuff? That’s right, the boomers eat that stuff up.
Whether Yellowstone is anti-woke or not is up to whoever wants to argue the point. But in an era of “woke cinema” and “wokeness” bleeding into the shows you stream, maybe there is an element hidden inside its story and character arcs that resonates with what some like to call a silent majority. There’s a flip side to the coin in every debate, and maybe Yellowstone is trying to prove that in this era of television. There always needs to be someone who goes against the grain a little bit.
The Analytics of it All
Boomers are just kind of getting around to grasping streaming. That is meant with respect for our elders, seriously. Since COVID, many people of that generation can hunt something down on Netflix and hit play on something just about as quickly as a Gen Z or Millennial could. However, in terms of broadcast television, Yellowstone conducts business in a very old-school manner. Streaming strives in your major markets—New York, Los Angeles, and a few major cities here and there. But in these flyover states, word of mouth has combated the formula of binge-watching a show after its seasonal run. Yellowstone seems to hit very rural areas of the country on a massive level, and another thing is that it is watched on cable more than streaming.
Baby boomers were all there for the creation of basic cable, and it turns out they still have never left the idea behind. Paramount Network comes with basic cable bundles these days. And the fact that there is a show that can either be premiered or syndicated there that a generation of people seem to admire is doing big business in an old-fashioned way. It’s not a bad thing; it’s an impressive thing to see that markets in Idaho, Iowa, Texas, and Kansas, to name a few, all have butts in seats on a weekly basis when Yellowstone airs on cable.
Boomers Grew Up on Westerns
If you’re in your mid-thirties, ask your father what the last great Western was. Chances are, he says, Unforgiven. Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan worships that film, revealing that it was a big inspiration for him when creating the show. Westerns show signs of life occasionally, but they aren’t like what they were before the late 1970s. It really is a genre of movies that lasted for decades and never showed cracks in their foundations for a long time. And anyone who is currently sixty-five and up doesn’t have anything like that anymore to watch on a continuous basis. So here, let them have Yellowstone.
Whether Yellowstone is anti-woke or in the realm of being that uncle whose opinions you can’t stand, be his favorite show or not. Yellowstone has had a lengthy run that may or may not have exposed a cultural divide among today’s breed of Americans. Boomers are still here, and they still have shows they want to watch. You can only watch The Sopranos so many times (or can you?). It’s a show that has themes important to this generation that combat all the shows about the billion-dollar lifestyle and millennial culture, and stay in tune with homegrown American core values.
Whether you cringe at your friend’s mom, who you happen to be Facebook friends with and who also posts about her love for Yellowstone while also posting conservative-themed memes, or not. You can’t deny that show creator Taylor Sheridan has tapped into something that we see once in a generation, and with spinoffs and other projects on the rise, he doesn’t seem to be slowing down.
