Peacock

**Peacock** is an American over-the-top subscription video on demand streaming service owned and operated by the Television and Streaming division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. Named after the logo of NBC, the service launched on July 15, 2020. Early availability for Xfinity Flex customers began on April 15, 2020, with X1 customers receiving the preview by May 1. As of September 2020, Peacock has over 15 million customers.

## History

On January 14, 2019, NBCUniversal announced that it would launch an over-the-top streaming service in 2020, and at the same time announced a reorganization created NBCUniversal Direct-to-Consumer and Digital Enterprises under chairman Bonnie Hammer. NBCUniversal announced the name "Peacock" and April 2020 availability on September 17, 2019. The announcement also included new original programming, NBCU property reboots, and that NBC series *The Office* and *Parks and Recreation* would be taken off from rival streaming services Netflix, Hulu, and Prime Video. The series would join the service once their exclusive streaming rights to rival streaming services expire, with *Parks and Recreation* joining in October 2020 and *The Office* joining in January 2021.

On January 16, 2020, Comcast announced that Peacock would soft launch for Xfinity cable and broadband customers on April 15, 2020, before launching nationally on July 15, 2020.

## Distribution

Peacock has three tiers of service: Free, Premium, and Premium Plus. The Free tier has a subset of the content of the upper two tiers and targets its users with advertising. The middle tier, Peacock Premium, has the advertising as well but provides the full library of content. In both ad-supported tiers, commercials are limited to five minutes per hour. The upper tier, Peacock Premium Plus, provides the full library without ads. Peacock Free is available at no charge to all U.S. Internet users. Peacock Premium is available as a monthly subscription but also is included in some services from TV service providers including Xfinity and Cox. Subscribers to Peacock Premium, whether subscribing directly or receiving service through a provider, can upgrade to the ad-free service, Peacock Premium Plus, for an additional monthly cost.

On May 6, 2020, a distribution deal with Apple was announced. As part of the deal, Peacock will be available on iOS devices and Apple TV on launch. Furthermore, content from both Peacock tiers will be listed in the Apple TV app and users from Apple devices will have the ability to subscribe to Peacock Premium with an in-app purchase. On July 20, the service became available on PlayStation 4.

On June 23, 2020, Canadian broadcaster Corus Entertainment announced that it had acquired exclusive Canadian broadcast rights to Peacock original programming.

On September 18, NBC and Roku reached an agreement to add Peacock to Roku's devices.

## Content

The service is drawn primarily from the NBCUniversal library, including subsidiaries such as Universal Pictures and Universal Television. It is suggested to include at least 15,000 hours of content on-launch without a subscription, and an additional 5,000 hours of content for Premium subscribers. Current episodes of NBC series will become available on Peacock the day after their premiere for Premium subscribers; non-subscribers will receive them on a week's delay. On January 26, 2020, it was announced that *The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon* and *Late Night with Seth Meyers* will stream on Peacock at 8:00 and 9:00 p.m. ET, respectively, ahead of their television premieres on NBC. The decision, however, was criticized by many of NBC's affiliate groups out of concern that the "pre-airs" of both late-night talk shows on Peacock would cannibalize viewership for the shows on local NBC stations.

Peacock also offers a lineup of around 25 curated digital linear channels, featuring long-form and digital-originated programming content from NBCUniversal's broadcast and cable properties as well as third-party content providers, which are designed to emulate a traditional broadcast programming experience (similar to services such as Pluto TV and Xumo, the latter of which was purchased by NBCUniversal parent Comcast in February 2020).

### **Original programming**

Main article: List of Peacock original programming

### **Third-party content**

On December 23, 2019, Lionsgate announced it would license library content for Peacock, as part of a larger agreement by Comcast to renew its carriage of Starz. In turn, NBCUniversal will license content for StarzPlay in the U.S. and internationally. On January 16, 2020, Peacock acquired the streaming rights to the Warner Bros. series *Two and a Half Men* and *George Lopez*, as well as *The Matrix* films. In February 2020, A&E Networks licensed some titles from the A&E and History libraries to Peacock.

On July 1, 2020, ViacomCBS announced that it would non-exclusively license some of its television series and films to Peacock, such as *The Affair*, *Everybody Hates Chris*, *Ray Donovan*, and *Undercover Boss* among others. The service will also hold rights to several Paramount Pictures films under a limited exclusivity window from 2021 to 2023.

On July 14, 2020, the service acquired the Canadian drama *Departure* for a U.S. premiere.

On July 17, 2020, Cinedigm announced that they had licensed over a dozen films and three streaming channels for Peacock's launch, with hundreds of other films and TV episodes to follow.

### Sports programming

In January 2020, NBC announced that the service would carry non-televised Premier League soccer matches and NBC's coverage of the Olympic Games (with plans to stream their opening and closing ceremonies live on the service). On July 9, 2020, NBC announced that the NBC Sports Gold Premier League Pass would be discontinued and its content moved into Peacock Premium at no additional charge, offering 175 Premier League games not on television per-season, along with on-demand replays of all matches. As part of the national launch, all matches played on July 15, 2020 were carried exclusively by Peacock for free.

### News programming

On July 13, it was announced that Peacock would host *Today All Day*, a digital extension of NBC's morning show *Today* featuring a mix of lifestyle content.

The service was to feature an international news channel as part of a joint venture with Britain's Sky News (whose parent company Sky plc had been recently acquired by Comcast), but the proposed service was scrapped in August 2020.