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For NBCUniversal, the streaming business is looking… up? We guess? Streaming has long appeared to be a house of cards destined to blow over at any moment, and yet it is the basket that Hollywood studios have put all their eggs in. So it must be a good thing for NBCU that its streaming service, Peacock, narrowed its losses to $101 million this quarter, compared to $215 million in losses the quarter before, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Now, if any of us average Joes were regularly losing hundreds of millions of dollars per quarter, we probably wouldn’t expect to still be in business at all, let alone celebrating our good fortune. Luckily there are plenty of lowly employees to sacrifice in the form of layoffs to keep the streaming machine chugging along. And don’t doubt more sacrifices will need to be made (at the bottom of the food chain, anyway, because surely the C-suite is far too valuable to lose) as launching a streaming service necessitates many quarters of untold financial loss as well as infinite growth, and Peacock has been having a little trouble with the latter requirement. Despite a tidy $1.2 billion in revenue (up from $1 billion this same time last year), subscriber numbers have stalled at 41 million from the last quarter to this one.
“We recently announced a $3 price increase rolling out in July for new subscribers and in late August for existing ones,” Comcast president Mike Cavanagh said on the company’s earnings call this week. “The impact of this price increase, combined with the strong upfront results I just discussed, helped position us in the fourth quarter as we launched the NBA and take on higher sports program expenses, particularly in the first year of the NBA contract, when we absorb the full impact of adding these new rights.” That’s right, Peacock, keep on hiking those prices and bleeding sports fans dry. Streaming is perfect and will surely live forever!
