More than 26 million people have signed up for NBCUniversal’s ad-supported streaming service, Peacock, NBCU CEO Jeff Shell said during the UBS Global TMT Virtual Investor Conference Tuesday.
That’s up 4 million sign-ups from the 22 million that Brian L. Roberts, CEO of NBCUniversal parent company Comcast, said the the new streaming service was nearing on Oct. 29. Comcast has projected Peacock will have up to 35 million subscribers by the end of 2024.
“The momentum just continues in a very strong linear way,” Shell said Tuesday. “And we don’t have any of our strong programming yet. So we get ‘The Office’ exclusively on January 1, which is one of Netflix’s top shows. If you try to watch ‘The Office’ on Netflix right now, pretty hard to find it. But despite the fact that they’re making it harder to find, it’s still, particularly amongst people under the age of 34, is a top show.”
To give readers an idea of Peacock’s continued growth, in mid-September, Roberts revealed the platform had just topped 15 million sign-ups. Prior to that update, as of the end of July, Peacock had 10 million sign-ups.
The Peacock ad-supported service first became available to Comcast and Cox customers on April 15, three months before its full launch on July 15. Unlike HBO Max, Peacock is still not available on Amazon Fire TV devices, a huge player in the streaming world.
Peacock, which offers originals like the “Saved by the Bell” reboot (pictured above) and library content like “30 Rock,” is available in two tiers, one for free and one with two different levels of fees.
The free option, called Peacock Free, includes next-day access to current seasons of freshman broadcast series on NBC, as well as library content like “Parks & Recreation” and curated daily news and sports programming. As for Peacock originals, this option only includes “select” episodes as well as access to what Peacock is calling “streaming genre channels” like “SNL Vault,” “Family Movie Night” and “Olympic Profiles.”
The second tier, called Peacock Premium, is available for no extra charge to Comcast and Cox subscribers. For everyone else, it cost $4.99 a month for an ad-supported option, or $9.99 a month to have no ads. The Premium tier features everything on the Free option but includes all Peacock Originals, early access to late-night series like “Tonight Show” and “Late Night” and more sports including Premier League soccer.
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