Peacock Now ‘Indifferent’ to Streaming vs Theatrical Release

As a smaller player in the streaming pond, Peacock has also struck out for a more holistic model than many of the key players. Instead, parent company NBCUniversal has made much of its intent to leverage the streaming service as part of their overall business, selling advertising and managing it as one with their other arms. It puts the service in a strange place overall- and now it seems they’re not all that interested in market feedback, either. An interesting statement, indeed! Blake & Wang P.A entertainment lawyer Los Angeles, Brandon Blake, looks at the matter in detail.

Comcast Shares Rise

As a flurry of Q3 results are released, Comcast has managed to do pretty solidly, and the news saw their share price inch up by 6% overall despite their $8.6M write-downs regarding Sky. Their movie (and, notably, parks) divisions were top performers for them this quarter. Peacock is also now sitting at around 30 M monthly active users, divided across their premium and free tiers. However, its operating losses widened for the quarter, too, despite attempts to put a very positive spin on the matter. We’ve also seen their year-spanning efforts to integrate Xfinity TV with streaming finally pay off.

Yet we still have to wonder how well a public announcement that they are “somewhat indifferent to what the consumer prefers” will be taken overall. Their goals for the streamer have been stated as to maximize their returns on their content, and a more straightforward return on investment, with NBCU now also “fairly indifferent” to whether their content airs on Peacock or via their linear TV service.

While Peacock’s different approach to streaming has paid off for it over the last year, one does have to wonder if such indifference across the board is really called for. An integrated content strategy is one thing. Being so openly dismissive of wider market trends, however, seems entirely different. Will such boldness pay off for them? For now, that remains to be seen- but they will need to patch that operating loss up fast to achieve it.