15
votes
NBCUniversal unveils Peacock, a free premium ad-supported streaming service with subscription tiers
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- Title
- NBCUNIVERSAL UNVEILS PEACOCK, A FREE PREMIUM AD-SUPPORTED STREAMING SERVICE WITH SUBSCRIPTION TIERS
- Published
- Jan 16 2020
- Word count
- 1715 words
I'm going to sound extremely negative and assholish.
It is yet another streaming service in the now severly fragmented streaming market.
I simply do not care.
Also did you notice that cable subscribers still have to pay to use it without ads? What a joke.
Yep. Honestly, every time I hear of a new streaming service being announced, my first thought is, "great, that just means more content is going to get pulled from other services." This is straight-up worse for the consumer than it was before.
No it's not. I no longer have to pay for channels I don't want. Sure, I don't care about every single show on the services I subscribe to (I don't have time to watch them all anyway), but I'm not getting utter crap like the Home Shopping Channel, ESPN, random religious channels, and channels that run poorly edited movies from 10 years ago with ads every 2 minutes. In fact, there are no ads at all!
I have no problem subscribing to 10 different services if I really want stuff from each of them. (It turns out I don't!) But honestly, most stuff that's supposedly exclusive to one service is available on other services a year later. I can get most Amazon original shows on iTunes 1 season behind, for example. Fine by me! And if there are services that don't do that, eh, so what? So I miss out on one good show, but still have dozens of others available on the services I do have. I'll live.
I like this way better than what we had with cable. It's literally better in every single way. It's not perfect, but it's pretty great.
Does it, though? I know Disney did/is doing that. CBS originally threatened to do that (or maybe actually did it for a while?) and now you can watch stuff from CBS All Access on services like iTunes. In fact, NBC pulled their shows from iTunes about 10 years ago, and eventually came back. I'm not too concerned about it.
Sorry, I meant compared to streaming services a few years ago. Netflix, for instance, felt almost comprehensive in the things you could find streaming. Obviously streaming now is still better than cable ever was, but the fracturing of streaming services with a focus on exclusive content is making the streaming landscape more like cable.
And yeah, I fully expect it will result in content getting pulled. I mean, they have a major incentive to do so, in that it will be a selling point for their own service, where they get all the profit. I mean, imagine if The Office were only available on Peacock, and how many months of subscriptions that would sell. At the very least, I think NBC would demand a better deal from Netflix, especially with their new leverage.
That is because Netflix wasn't the primary source of revenue for most of the shows being run on it. It used to be that everything on Netflix had already made its money during an initial run on cable or a broadcast network. Studios could license their content to Netflix for cheap, less than it cost to even produce it, because they were already profitable. As an added bonus, it served as advertising for current and new seasons airing on cable.
Why do networks pull all their shows off Netflix now that they're starting up their own streaming services? It doesn't seem like this should suddenly stop being a valid strategy now that they're launching their own service, just shifts the big money maker from cable to their own thing, or Hulu, or whatever they decide to go with.
Because Netflix isn't willing to pay the money those networks want to make their shows. Those costs started going up as streaming began to replace cable/broadcast as the primary money maker. Netflix would rather spend that money on it's own original content that it doesn't have to keep renewing deals for every 5 years.
I've expanded on this thought in more detail, if you're interested.
$50/mo worth of streaming services will provide anyone with more content than they could ever possibly hope to consume, for half the price of cable. And there's nothing stopping any of us from rotating some subs every few months to catch different shows that we really want to see on other networks.
If you want one subscription that covers everything, we had that. It was cable, and everyone complained that it was too expensive and made you pay for channels you didn't want. I don't really get what people are expecting out of streaming services. Netflix was never going to be able to shoulder the production costs of the entire TV industry on $10/mo subscriptions. This explosion of new services was inevitable as studios shift their primary revenue source from broadcast/cable to streaming.
They didn't. The overwhelming majority of their content was not first run on Netflix, it was shows in syndication they were able to buy rights to much more cheaply, same as any bargain bin cable channel showing old reruns. There was never a point where the majority of new content was debuting on Netflix.
Streaming is the new cable. Pay for Internet + what you wish to stream vs. Paying for Internet + cable access (+ whatever "premium" channels you wish to access).
At least it's a step up in that you can pick and choose your subscriptions, rather than being limited to bundles, and it's much easier to cancel and renew subscriptions as you feel like it.
That said, you're right, it's drifting towards cable, and we're all worse off for it. I wish it were more like music streaming services, which don't have nearly the same problem of exclusivity.
I'm not so sure. I think people have a general proportion of their budget they're willing to allocate to media and that proportion is probably roughly what cable subscription packages charged. As things move to streaming we're just going to see the total of all the streaming services approach a similar price.
It seems to me like that's the "what you wish to stream" for you.
Then it's not really a stretch for you to pick 1 other service with content you like. Maybe rotate it every few months to different services.
I've already been doing exactly this for a few years.
Well it being free kind of takes the sting out of it being another service, but they’re kind of undercutting themselves if they still force you to sign up for it and create an account.
Another annoying bit with ad supported streaming services is that they are SO much more invasive and annoying than traditional TV advertising. They go through lengths to make the ads unskippable or do weird things to keep you from pausing or rewinding/fast-forwarding. They sometimes do stuff like forcing your volume to not be muted in order to continue playing the ad (which I find especially annoying). It’s all very obnoxious and disrespectful of the viewers time and space.
... and now comcast is jacking up the base service price to cover the cost of the service.
https://www.techspot.com/amp/news/83693-comcast-jacking-up-prices-again-thanks-nbc-peacock.html
Makes me feel like plunderin' and sailing the high seas.
Tiers:
Launch Day:
For those of us in South-America this is bad news. These super specific services are rarely available for us (we don't even get Hulu...), so removing content from Netflix and making it exclusive will alienate us for sure. And since they don't want my money, please forgive me for not feeling any guilt for using Piratebay!
I was very excited for Peacock, but this press release kinda settle that down for me. I was expecting much more from Universal.
I expected the price point, but when they're having to list their content in hours, you know it's lacking.
Hard pass. It took me years to finally get out of Comcast's regional monopoly and they will never get another dime from me.
Can't wait for this to fail to meet growth projections and get shut down in 18 months, taking the only legitimate streaming copies of a bunch of shows with it.