Today Comcast reported its 1st quarter 2023 earnings. In Comcast’s Q1 earnings report released this morning, the company said it lost 614,000 video customers losses. That works out to be 6,800 subscribers Every Day. The company added just 32,324 broadband customers for the quarter.
Peacock Comcast’s plan to offset cord cutting reported that it lost $704 million in the first three months of 2023. This works out to be about 7,822 million every day lost in the 1st quarter of 2023.
Comcast is not alone in losing money on Peacock. Disney+ and Paramount+ are both reportedly losing money and don’t expect to be profitable until 2024 or 2025.
This all comes as Comcast’s CFO Jason Armstrong says the changes Peacock is going through are costly. “It’s a costly pivot, and we’re right in the middle right now,” said Armstrong at the Deutsche Bank Media, Internet & Telecom Conference earlier this month.
There was some good news for Comcast’s Peacock service as it added 2 million paid subscribers. This brings the total number of paid subscribers up to 22 million.
Comcast said they expect to lose $3 billion this year as Peacock will undergo some changes.
Right now, many Comcast customers can get Peacock for free. Now Comcast has announced that this summer, any customer getting Peacock for free will need to start paying.
To make the service more attractive, NBCUniversal recently announced that Peacock would be adding live news every morning from MSNBC and CNBC. This new block called “Morning News Live” will offer live feeds of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
Peacock will also be the new home for some Big Ten sporting events this fall helping drive subscriptions. Peacock also struck some deals to add more movies to the service to grow its catalog.
“We’re continuously exploring ways to expand Peacock’s premium live content, and creating this unique morning news hub powered by trusted sources across NBCUniversal is something only Peacock can do,” said Brian Henderson, Executive Vice President, Programming, Peacock. “With ‘Morning Joe’ and ‘Squawk Box’ live each morning, not to mention ‘TODAY’ for our Premium Plus users, we’re giving subscribers a new reason to start each morning with Peacock.”
Comcast sees Peacock as a long-term investment and, for now, is happily burning money with the goal of making it profitable later.