Peacock has 16 million subscribers but still lost over $1 billion last year
Maybe it'll help if they make a second season of MacGruber
Aux News Peacock
Peacock is not just the streaming service that sounds most like a canned 30 Rock joke—it is also the streaming service that is costing Comcast a lot of money. During their fourth-quarter earning call on Thursday, as reported by Vulture, Peacock execs revealed that the streaming service has about 16 million full access subscribers, but still lost over $1 billion last year.
About nine million of those subscribers are people who pay monthly. The other seven million are people who get Peacock via cable or wireless bundles, and don’t actually pay an extra fee for it.
Peacock also has a completely free tier, which has more ads and and limits the streamers’ content catalogue. If Comcast adds those people in, the full active subscriber base if 24.5 million, which, according to Vulture, is up about 25 percent from what the company reported in summer 2021.
Comcast plans to double its investment on Peacock content this year, spending $3 billion on original programming and library acquisitions. Peacock’s new 2022 content lineup already includes Bel-Air, coming this February, their Tiger King series Joe vs. Carole, and the Jennifer Lopez rom-com Marry Me.
It’s also not clear when Comcast execs might want to pull currently airing NBC shows off of Hulu to air exclusively on Peacock. Hulu has way more subscribers than Peacock, so it seems they want to keep the shows where they get more eyeballs, for now. (As a Bravo fan, this writer does hope Comcast execs would start putting new episodes of Housewives and Below Deck on Peacock and free her from the terrible tyranny of the Bravo app)
Peacock is also probably hoping that the upcoming Winter Olympics will give the app a boost, but it didn’t help that much last summer during the Tokyo Olympics. And according to a poll released by Variety, the Beijing Olympics aren’t going to be a big draw for the streamer.
25 Comments
Jennifer Lopez is playing Maeby Funke?
The best part of that is J-Los complete lack of understanding of Arrested Development (I am assuming) would be a pretty solid proxy to Maeby’s ironic detachment. She would unintentionally be playing the character the exact way Maeby should be played.
It’s as if she’s at a total J-Loss.
No they’ve cast S/Her.
If they still had the rights to Iron Man, Captain America and Thor, then they’d be fine.People would have signed up in their droves for that sweet sweet early era MCU action.
Still? They just launched last fucking year. OF COURSE THEY LOST A LOT OF MONEY.
That’s how this works. Jesus fucking Christ.
Was thinking of getting it just for the free month trial next month just to watch figure skating at the Olympics. Skating and Gymnastics are the only reasons I would even think of subscribing to it the rest of there stuff doesn’t interest me.
Peacock is fine and has some good stuff. But they still do that thing where you can’t watch everything (that is, they’re asking me for money) so… I have seen and enjoyed the first few episodes of Girls 5evah and Rutherford Falls.I hope they don’t sue me for losing them that 1 billion.
They’ll send hired goons to collect back pay for watched episodes.That is, unless you gave them “123 Fake Street” when you signed up.
Girls5Eva is terrific. Glad a second season is coming.
absolutely worth the price of admission
Bel-Air, Joe vs. Carole, Marry Me . . . .
Strangely, I find myself thinking of when you are trying to parallel park and accidentally slam into the car behind you, then hit the gas and slam into the car in front of you too.
I’m glad Peacock saved AP Bio and ordered the third Psych movie (second one was ordered and complete ahead of Peacock so not giving them credit for that). They have a few other OK shows. But they have an abysmal interface and they need a lot more content to be meaningful in any way.
A lot of the newer streaming services kind of screwed up their user interface. HBO Max did the same thing (they’re supposedly pushing out a big overhaul of it early this year).
The thing that annoys me about Peacock is that, unlike other streaming services, if you turn the volume all the way up it doesn’t stay that way for the next video.
Anybody got any numbers on Paramount+? I can’t think they’re doing too hot either—lots of the same issues as Peacock regarding dearth of new content.
So much of what’s been announced for Paramount+ is just reboots of old shows or movies. Nothing they have interests me in the least.
I have it through my inlaws. Most days we use it for Paw Patrol. God I hate paw patrol.
You have the power to never watch it again. Just throw the tv out a 2nd story window.
The burst of the streaming bubble is only a matter of when, not if.
Universal owns a very hefty movie catalog and there’s so little of it on the site. Even allowing for stuff that they have loaned to Amazon or Netflix or wherever, there are some weird omissions. I realize back catalogs aren’t considered as important as originals for streaming sites, their selection is weirdly paltry.
Yellowstone and OG Law and Order are all I need. Olympics coverage so I don’t have to be up at 2am for curling and biathlon is just icing on the cake.
Just like CBS all access that failed, asking people to pay for a streaming service for a network that is already supposed to be free and making billions from ads is just insulting. Even if you get it for free with cable, there is no reason really for it to exist. It is wonky as heck and its interface is terrible. Yeah, I have seen a few things on there that were good, like Dr. Death, but there is really no reason why they should not be putting their content ON THEIR ACTUAL NETWORK. Get the ratings and the ad revenue Now all these services are starting to put ads in..so what is even the point of them anymore? The entire reason people liked Netflix was there was no ads..the monthly fee was supposed to take care of them. A streamer with ads is a TV channel, that you are paying for extra. That is a sucker deal. Netflix’s stock is down 40%! over the last three months and down 30% over the last 12, The bloom is way off these streamers.
16 million’s not that many subscribers unless they got a really high ARPU (Average Revenue Per User). I’m not surprised they lost money given the fixed costs in running a streaming service plus producing expensive content for it. And according to a poll released by Variety, the Beijing Olympics aren’t going to be a big draw for the streamer.It’s weird that they decided to basically sacrifice a whole Sunday’s worth of ratings and ad revenue in the middle of the Olympics (it overlaps with the Super Bowl). Usually the Olympics are super-oriented around working best with the American TV market, which is why they’re typically not held when they might overlap with other big American sporting events.