During the pandemic, Peacock has been able to “accelerate our deal flow” for content licensing, Strauss says, citing pacts with A+E Networks, Warner Bros., Sony and Paramount. The Peacock Premium tier will have close to 20,000 hours of content at launch (versus the 15,000 hours NBCU projected earlier this year), and Peacock Free will have more than half the titles in the upper tier.
The streamer will feature current-season programming from NBC and Telemundo; access to hundreds of movies, like “Jurassic Park,” “Do the Right Thing” and “Shrek”; and TV comedies such as “Parks and Recreation,” “30 Rock,” “Saturday Night Live,” “King of Queens,” “Everybody Loves Raymond” and “Two and a Half Men.” Peacock also is home to dramas including “Law & Order: SVU,” “Downton Abbey,” “Yellowstone,” “Friday Night Lights” and “House,” as well as kids programming including “Curious George” and DreamWorks Animation’s “Where’s Waldo?”
Peacock will include daily programming highlights from NBC News outlets, NBC Sports, E! News and Access Hollywood, as well as late-night fare from Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers. It will have an NFL Wild Card game in January 2021 and sports like Premier League soccer and Ryder Cup coverage. News and sports are “an important part of our content strategy,” says Frances Manfredi, president of content acquisition and strategy for Peacock and NBCUniversal Digital Enterprises.
As Manfredi concedes, Peacock isn’t going to get content from some quarters. “It would be stupid to deny that the vertical integration isn’t happening in the market,” she says. On the other hand, the Peacock acquisitions team has had “a lot of discussions with studios that felt their content potentially gets lost on really large platforms. They felt we would give them more attention in terms of promotion,” according to Manfredi. “Nobody has said, ‘Nah, we don’t want to be on Peacock.’”
Using data from the initial Comcast test, reaching 15 million Xfinity X1 and Flex customers, Strauss and the Peacock team have made some adjustments ahead of the broader midsummer launch. Strauss had T-shirts made for the crew with the word “Pivot”— a well-known Shell directive — emblazoned across the back.
Among the learnings: People were looking for an escape from the news, with viewing of classic movies like “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” and Hitchcock films performing well, along with nostalgic comedies like “30 Rock,” “Frazier” and “Everybody Loves Raymond.” Peacock adjusted to account for the viewing behavior.
Also, Peacock users gravitated to the curated channels on the service, around brands like NBC News Now, shows like “SNL” and genres like true crime. For the U.S. launch, Peacock will more than double those channels, to more than 40, with a longer-term target of having around 75. (That will include a channel around “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.”)
“Sometimes when you turn on the TV, you just want to watch TV,” Strauss says. “There’s this notion that ‘Nobody watches TV’ — but the data suggests something different.”
Comcast hustles to catch up to an already crowded streaming-video field with the launch of Peacock.
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