Today during the NBCUniversal Upfront presentation, they claimed that Peacock was the most downloaded app of 2022. NBC has not given any supporting evidence for this, but it was a significant announcement during their 2023 upfront event as they push their new shows and new streaming plans. This comes from reports of attendees at the event.
Recently 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 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.
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.
This all comes as Comcast’s CFO Jason Armstrong says the changes Peacock is going through are costly during the 1st quarter 2023 earnings. “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.
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.
NBC’s Upfront events are happening now we will have more news as it breaks all this week.