Comcast’s Peacock is strutting its stuff on center stage.
The company announced more details about its upcoming service Peacock at a special investor presentation Thursday. The latest entrant in the streaming revolution is expected to draw users away from traditional cable and satellite subscriptions and more towards over-the-top and subscription replacements.
Peacock can be seen as a way for Comcast to hedge their losses and plan for the future. The service will have three tiers. An ad-supported version with 7,500 hours of programming will be free for everyone. There will also be a full version that includes 15,000 hours of programming with original content, which will be $4.99 for an ad-supported version and $10 for an ad-free version. Comcast and Cox customers will get the full ad-supported version for free. Of the major streaming subscription services, only Hulu currently allows for traditional advertising.
The service previously announced it will be the exclusive home for hit content including “The Office,” “30 Rock,” the “Law and Order” series, and “Parks and Recreation,” as well as Universal movies like the “Fast & Furious” and “Back to the Future” franchises. It will also have original series like reboots of “Punky Brewster,” “Battlestar Galactica” and “Saved by the Bell,” in addition to a new series based of the novel “Brave New World” and the podcast “Dr. Death.”
Comcast is expected to spend about $2 billion on content. New shows including “MacGruber” and DreamWorks Animation series like “Madagascar: A Little Wild” will debut on the service. “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” and “Late Night with Seth Meyers” will post at 8 p.m. ET ahead of its late-night airings. And, a joint-venture live-news service between NBC News and Sky will stream on the platform.
As a telecommunications company, Comcast has been in an interesting position as the number of cable subscriptions dwindle. The five largest pay-TV services lost a total of 3.2 million customers in 2018 or about 4.2 percent, according to their company reports. The numbers have continued to decline, including a 1.74 million subscriber drop in Q3 of 2019 alone, according to Leichtman Research Group.
To launch the service, Comcast is pulling many of its shows from rival streamers. It reportedly paid $500 million for a five-year deal to move “The Office” off of Netflix and onto Peacock. It is also expected to move shows from Hulu to Peacock once their current deals expire. Exclusivity rights with Hulu end as early as this year, and Comcast can cancel its licensing agreements starting in 2022. Comcast was previously a partial owner of Hulu, but the company sold its stake to Disney for $5.8 billion through a deal announced in May 2019.
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