Peacock, NBCUniversal’s ad-supported streaming service, now has more than 26 million sign-ups.
That number is up from the nearly 22 million sign-ups NBCU announced in October and the 15 million sign-ups the company reported in September.
NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell, speaking today at a UBS investor conference, said Peacock was launched under the idea that there’s room in the market for a lower-cost or free streaming service. He described Peacock as a “next-generation broadcast network” and called it the backend of NBC’s traditional broadcast network.
Shell said that advertising is still the primary revenue stream for Peacock and so his company measures the service’s success via sign-ups, how many of them use the service regularly and how many hours per month those users are watching the service.
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“We’re above on the metrics for Peacock on each of those three. We’re above where we were in the business plan despite not having the Olympics or any of our original programming,” Shell said. He added that upcoming content additions like “The Office” in early 2021 should help drive continued user and engagement growth.
Peacock has been available to Comcast subscribers – who were all given free access to Peacock Premium, which provides access to original content but still contains ads – since April. The service went nationwide in July. Besides the growing sign-ups total, Comcast has said that Peacock is one of the top three streaming services on both Comcast X1 and Flex.
NBCUniversal has been setting agreements with film exhibitors including AMC and Cinemark to shrink theatrical-to-transactional digital platform window, but it’s not nearly as radical as Warner Bros.’ plan to release all its 2021 films on HBO Max and in theaters on the same day. Shell was asked about HBO Max’s plans and said that NBCU still believes in the transactional experience for movies.
“It makes it a little more premium than just turning on your TV and watching it somewhere,” he said.