NBCUniversal is the last of the major media companies’ streaming offerings to set a launch date. The company will unveil its streaming service Peacock on Thursday at an investor day in New York, joining other recent entrants such as Apple TV+, Disney+, HBO Max, and Quibi.
Peacock is the last of the known major media streaming services to officially “launch,” joining Disney+, Apple TV+, HBO Max and Quibi as subscription video products that will compete or are now competing against Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, CBS All Access and others.
Thursday’s announcement will essentially close out phase one of the streaming era: product announcements and launch dates. Phase two will be figuring out how these services interact with each other and traditional bundled pay television…
About 80 million U.S. households still subscribe to some form of satellite or cable TV, down from a peak of close to 100 million roughly a decade ago… Then again, 80 million U.S. households is still a huge number. More Americans still subscribe to cable and satellite TV than Netflix, which has about 60 million subscribers, or any other streaming service.
MacDailyNews Take: Ladies and gentlemen, the field is approaching the starting gate. Place your bets! The not-so-funny thing is that, if you subscribe to them all plus then a live TV streaming service like Sling TV, YouTube TV, Hulu with Live TV, AT&T TV Now, FuboTV, etc., to replace your satellite or cable TV bill, you might end up paying more!
Oh the streaming glut is going to cost more and be less reliable than cable? Imagine that.
Apple is the clear loser in this race, at least for the forseeable future. With almost no content, appeal will be extremely limited. They’ll tout huge “subscriber” numbers at some point, but that’s because they’re giving it away for free to as many people as they can think of. I’d wager there are less than 1000 paying customers right now.