70 Years Later, Gunsmoke Has Become The Most Unlikely Streaming Hit

According to the latest Nielsen streaming report, Gunsmoke is one of the top 10 most-watched acquired series across all measured streaming services. Yes, the 70-year-old Western TV show adapted from a radio series about the residents of Dodge City, Kansas, just joined a ratings chart that includes beloved series like Family Guy and The White Lotus as well as ever-popular children’s shows like Bluey and SpongeBob SquarePants. 

You may be tempted to write off Gunsmoke’s appearance as an anomaly fueled by the specificness of that category or perhaps Nielsen’s specific ways of measuring such data. However, a closer look reveals a more substantial story. Gunsmoke was watched for more measured minutes than shows like Severance, The Traitors, Zero Day, and Yellowjackets. People aren’t just rediscovering Gunsmoke; they’re tuning into it in numbers not seen since the series finally went off the air in 1975 after a remarkable 20-year run. 

Why? Well…that’s a great question. And while it can be futile to try to understand why anything succeeds in the often odd world of streaming, the truth is that Gunsmoke’s resurgence has been telegraphed by trends that tell us quite a lot about the state of streaming shows and the people who watch them. 

Gunsmoke Has Slowly Been Gaining a Streaming Audience For Quite Some Time

It’s important to note that Gunsmoke’s sudden rise in popularity among streamers isn’t quite so sudden. According to the Nielsen reports, Gunsmoke garnered over 10 billion viewing minutes in 2024 across Peacock and Paramount+. Those numbers are even more impressive when you consider that Gunsmoke wasn’t even added to Peacock until December 2024. For that matter,  those figures seemingly do not account for services like Pluto TV and Philo where Gunsmoke is also available and, in the case of Pluto TV, almost always on. 

In some ways, what we’re seeing with this report is simply what happens when an already popular legacy series becomes available on multiple streaming platforms. And while many production companies want their piece of the pie and use any exclusives they can find to encourage you to add their subscription service to your ever-escalating monthly costs, this is a pretty clear example of how individual series can benefit from being available on multiple platforms. It makes you wonder just how skewed metrics-driven media is and what kinds of projects we’re missing out on due to the perception that certain concepts aren’t as popular as they would be if they were simply more available. That said, you can imagine what Gunsmoke’s streaming numbers would look like if the show were available on Netflix?

But for the moment, let’s focus on the streaming service that has quickly become Gunsmoke’s home in terms of these reports: Paramount+. 

Paramount+ Is a Little More Popular Than You Might Think

While Gunsmoke’s addition to the Peacock library seems to have helped put it over the top in terms of these rating reports, Paramount+ has long been the most reliable (measured) streaming source for the legacy show. You’re not alone if the mere mention of Paramount+ caused you to roll your eyes and recall just how flooded the streaming market has become. Paramount+ often ranks near the bottom of all streaming services due to its awful UI and bizarre content library. Few were surprised when Paramount+ recently posted a staggering $286M fourth quarter loss.

But Paramount+ has a couple of things going for it that may have helped draw in a Gunsmoke-eager crowd in recent weeks and months. Notably, Paramount+ was recently one of the major streaming homes for the NCAA tournament: an event that reportedly drew massive viewership numbers across various providers. Streaming services have long touted the importance of incorporating more live programming (one of traditional TV’s major remaining draws), and this certainly appears to be a case of live events lifting all boats.

Paramount+ is also available as part of the increasingly popular Walmart+ membership program. Even if you’re not willing to entertain the idea that there may be some crossover between the older heads of houses in many largely rural areas who may be interested in both a Walmart+ subscription as well as watching Gunsmoke, we again come back to the idea of availability being tied to appeal. The more excuses people have to subscribe to Paramount+, the more likely they are to find Gunsmoke. 

So far as that goes, Paramount’s beleaguered streaming service does have one major draw in its library, and it just so happens to be Gunsmoke adjacent. 

The Yellowstone Effect

For quite some time, cord-cutters and younger viewers drastically underestimated the appeal and reach of Taylor Sheridan’s Paramount Network Western series, Yellowstone. And while critical opinions of that series remain split, nobody is denying that Yellowstone is one of the most broadly popular series in recent years, especially among viewers who do not typically gravitate towards the kind of prestige TV entertainment that often steals headlines.

To be fair, even Paramount was seemingly surprised by Yellowstone’s surge in popularity. Former Paramount President and CEO Bob Bakish regretted letting Peacock acquire the streaming rights to Yellowstone before they knew just how popular the show would become in its later seasons. And while Yellowstone’s continued absence on Paramount+ remains a source of confusion and frustration for viewers and distributors, Paramount learned its lesson and decided to make Yellowstone’s spinoff prequel series (1883 and 1923) available exclusively through the streaming service. 

If you love all things Yellowstone, as many do, 1883 and 1923 are some of the biggest reasons to splurge on a Paramount+ subscription. From there, it’s not difficult to imagine Yellowstone universe fans gravitating towards Gunsmoke. The two series may be separated by decades of stylistic influences, but they are both fairly pure examples of a Western genre that has been growing in prominence since the COVID-19 pandemic and Yellowstone’s ascension. Even Little House on the Prairie (a comparatively quaint 1970s Western series that focuses more on frontier life) has been experiencing a resurgence in streaming popularity alongside Gunsmoke.

Indeed, Little House on the Prairie’s parallel popularity may be the biggest piece of this puzzle. While it is also a Western of a kind, it shares another quality with Gunsmoke that may be more important to understanding their recent streaming successes. 

We’re Living In the Age of Comfort Watches

Streaming services prioritize acquiring legacy shows due to the simple power of the familiar. And while Netflix, Disney, Paramount, and more hope that allowing you to watch old favorites like Friends, The Simpsons, and Star Trek will tempt you to watch the original offerings, the result is largely the same in the end. Your subscription fee clears every month even if you only watch The Office. 

But the popularity of legacy series in the age of streaming is about more than falling back on the familiar rather than shuffling through aisles of infinite choices once more. Who among us in the last several years or so hasn’t found ourselves turning to comfort watches to help deal with a long day of managing the absolute everything of it all? It’s significantly more difficult to embrace something bleak, substantial, and emotionally/intellectually challenging after spending an entire day doing your best to process endless transmissions from a world filled with microphone-armed masochists cultivating what the sailor Laurence Millechamp once described as “a proper nursery for desperation.”

What constitutes a comfort watch may vary from person to person, though many share a few key factors. They’re typically older by the very nature of them being familiar, they tend to be removed from the specifics of our current situation (and are often funny), and they usually represent the antithesis of modern media offerings in some way. 

That last factor is proving to be increasingly important. While it’s easy enough to understand why series like Bob’s Burgers, Family Guy, and The Big Bang Theory pop up on these rating reports as traditional comfort watches, wanting more than what streaming typically offers explains why NCIS still draws viewers or why Suits unexpectedly captured Gen Z’s attention. Such shows are pulled from a far different era of television that we are far removed stylistically, if not chronologically. People aren’t just looking for streaming alternatives and comfort watches; they’re looking for companion shows that help fill gaps created by trends in the modern media market. 

You don’t need to know much about Gunsmoke to understand how it fits into those gaps. A 1950s Western where the bad guys wear black and justice is dispensed in under a half-hour across largely self-contained adventures checks a lot of boxes. It may be older than other established comfort watches and slightly outside of the legacy genre norms, but it just seems remarkably cozy. However, if that is how you perceive Gunsmoke, then you’re missing out on one of the biggest reasons why the show remains so popular.  

Gunsmoke Is Still a Great Show

While Gunsmoke is sometimes best remembered for remarkably remaining on the air for 20 years, those who know the show best often cite it as one of the most influential Westerns in any medium. Not all of the show’s 635 episodes were winners, but the series often exhibited remarkable creative consistency over that run. It wasn’t just what millions of homes tuned into because it was one of the only things on TV; it was a surprisingly complex series filled with characters navigating ambiguous scenarios with help from their often challenged moral compasses. 

Yes, Marshal Matt Dillon often gets his man at the end of each episode, and everything works out for the relative best. But it’s the details between the show’s iconic opening and that moment that often matter most. Our heroes’ abilities to do the right thing only feel significant because it’s an ability that is constantly being challenged. 

There is an eternal joy in watching people exhibit basic, simple morality as they overcome challenges in a series born from the classic, more professional performance and production sensibilities. It’s the same joy that draws some to shows like The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, and the aforementioned Little House on the Prairie. In some ways, the further we get from Gunsmoke only makes it easier to appreciate both the show’s influence on so much that followed and what an often wonderful antithesis it is to what modern prestige series navigating the post-antihero era have become. 

Gunsmoke’s resurgence is undoubtedly rooted in the desire to see something a bit simpler and familiar in a time of complicated issues that often force us to navigate frustratingly new challenges. There is always a danger in romanticizing the past, and that danger probably feels especially pressing in the case of a 70-year-old TV show gaining popularity at a time when the perceived masculinity and often misremembered morality of both the Western genre and the ‘50s era of America are often weaponized to push dangerous agendas. 

But sitting down to watch Gunsmoke (as many are currently doing) reveals something pleasantly different. It’s a professionally produced series about the enduring power of humanity that can be absorbed and enjoyed in what little free time many of us may be lucky to have. Its comfort comes from both its format, its quality, and the ways it convincingly pushes the fantasy of righteousness without sacrificing its fundamental storytelling. 

Gunsmoke is far from perfect, but it still has so much to teach us about television as a storytelling medium and what keeps us coming back. Perhaps streaming providers will look a little harder at Gunsmoke’s resurgence and learn more from it than what we can observe on the surface level when greenlighting future projects. More likely than not, though, we’ll all just keep watching Gunsmoke. 

The post 70 Years Later, Gunsmoke Has Become The Most Unlikely Streaming Hit appeared first on Den of Geek.