The premiere of 1883 brought in a big audience for Paramount Network Sunday — as well as for its eventual exclusive home on streaming service Paramount+.

The Yellowstone prequel from creator Taylor Sheridan averaged nearly 5 million viewers for its on-air debut (4.98 million, to be precise), setting a series premiere record for Paramount Network and becoming the most watched series premiere on cable in more than six years — since Fear the Walking Dead premiered to more than 10 million viewers in August 2015. A simulcast of the premiere on CMT drew an additional 609,000 viewers, and including encores, 1883 brought in 6.4 million people Sunday night, per Nielsen figures.

The prequel is well ahead of the Yellowstone series premiere (2.83 million viewers) in June 2018, and it also topped November’s Mayor of Kingstown premiere (2.6 million) — which also comes from Sheridan and, like 1883, had Yellowstone as a lead-in. Sunday’s episode of the flagship series continued its huge run on Paramount Network, drawing 7.74 million viewers, plus 726,000 more on CMT.

Like other streamers, Paramount+ doesn’t release detailed ratings data for its programming. Parent company ViacomCBS, however, says 1883 is the most watched series premiere to date on Paramount+ and more than doubled the previous record. (Yellowstone, incidentally, isn’t available for streaming on Paramount+ thanks to a previous rights deal with NBCUniversal’s Peacock, which has the first three seasons.)

Also on cable Sunday, Showtime’s Dexter: New Blood hit same-day season highs in both on-air (713,000) and cross-platform (2.34 million) viewers. Hallmark’s movie Tis the Season to Be Merry came in at 2.41 million viewers for its linear debut.

NBC’s Sunday Night Football dominated the broadcast slate in primetime with 18.06 million viewers, while Fox had the biggest NFL game of the day with its late afternoon telecast (22.01 million). ABC’s annual showing of The Sound of Music averaged 3.3 million viewers.

Bookmark THR.com/Ratings for more ratings news and numbers.

Dec. 21, 8:30 a.m. Updated with final ratings figures for Sunday.