Comcast's Peacock Reaches 42M Subscribers Thanks To WWE, 'The Office'

Peacock, the streaming service operated by Comcast CMCSA subsidiary NBCUniversal, has reached the 42-million mark for sign-ups.

What Happened: Peacock soft-launched on April 15, 2020, as an exclusive offering for Xfinity cable and broadband customers before rolling out nationally two months later. The new membership level was announced Thursday in Comcast’s first-quarter earnings report. In the previous report released in January, the service had 33 million sign-ups.

Peacock revenue totaled over $100 million in 2020, but the service generated a loss before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $700 million, according to The Hollywood Reporter. NBCUniversal is predicting $2 billion in losses for Peacock over the 2020 and 2021 span.

Nonetheless, Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts said Peacock users were viewing "nearly 20% more programming hours each month than our traditional audience on NBC," accumulating 1 billion hours before their screens.

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What It Means: Comcast credited Peacock’s acquisition of WWE WWE classic programming and the long-running NBC sitcom “The Office” as helping to bring in viewers.

Upcoming productions announced by Peacock include an eight-episode supernatural drama based on the Crypt TV “Girl In The Woods” films, a reality series featuring a mash-up of the stars in the sprawling “Real Housewives” television franchise, and a six-episode romantic comedy “Wolf Like Me” from “Little Monsters” director Abe Forsythe, starring Josh Gad and Isla Fisher.

Peacock’s viewing audience is still on the smallish side compared to Netflix’s NFLX 208 million and the 100 million at Disney+ and 99.7 million at Hulu, both owned by Walt Disney Co. DIS. ATT's T WarnerMedia reported that its HBO and HBO Max had a total of 44.2 million subscribers as of the end of March.

(Image by FrankundFrei / Pixabay.)