Peacock Stays Flat With 13 Million Paid Subscribers, NBCU Sees 'Choppy' Ad Market

NBCUniversal’s streaming service Peacock didn’t have too much to offer new subscribers in Q2. After shifting its focus to the paid tier instead of its free one, the streamer stayed flat at 13 million paid subscribers—the same number it reported following the first quarter—parent company Comcast said during its earnings report Thursday morning. While Peacock didn’t lose any paying subscribers, it did see a dip in its monthly active accounts, dropping a million down to 27 million. That’s still up from the 24.5 million the company reported in January. “Given the normal ebbs and flows of our content slate, we were pleased to have stayed relatively flat for the second quarter,” said Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts during the company’s earning call. As Peacock Turns 2, the Streamer Looks to Fly Even Higher Roberts is optimistic Peacock will have a “very strong” fall when NBC's next-day broadcast rights become exclusively Peacock’s, following the end of the company's deal with Hulu. All current in-season programming—including Saturday Night Live, The Voice along with the Chicago and Law & Order franchises—will stream exclusively to the company’s own streaming service Peacock, starting in September. Currently the shows stream on both Hulu and Peacock the day after they air on NBC. Roberts also pointed to PVOD as a potential growth driver, with early access to Universal films as a “proven driver” of subscriber acquisition and engagement. In the fall the streamer will also have Sunday Night Football, the Premier League and the World Cup's Spanish-language broadcast. Peacock isn't the only streamer that wasn't able to add subscribers last quarter. Netflix just lost almost a million subscribers, but that number was only half of what it had expected to drop. A strong upfront, but 'choppy' ad market Last month, NBCUniversal wrapped its largest upfront ever, with revenue exceeding $7 billion, which eclipses last year’s upfront haul. Peacock secured $1 billion in commitments, double the commitments from 2021-22. Yet despite the record upfront haul, NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell described the advertising market as “choppy” and down year-over-year in the scatter market. “It's really segment by segment base: some segments are doing better, some segments are doing worse,” said Shell. “We just finished the upfront, and the upfront was way better than we expected.” The auto category was down in the upfront, but NBCUniversal saw significant gains in pharma, and expects to have strong political season coming up. NBCUniversal did not have the NHL this year after Disney overtook the company as the league’s top television partner, following the expiration of NBCUniversal’s 10-year, $2 billion deal. “If you take out the NHL playoffs from last year, we were actually up in the quarter [in advertising], which I think is better than some of the other companies that have reported so far,” said Shell.