Comcast video customers will be the first to get Comcast/NBCUniversal’s new streaming platform, dubbed “Peacock,” featuring over 400 TV series and 600 movies, mostly from the library of Universal Studios, beginning this spring.

“This is a very exciting time for our company, as we chart the future of entertainment,” NBCUniversal chairman Steve Burke said at an event this afternoon announcing details about the service to Comcast’s investors. “We have one of the most enviable collections of media brands and the strongest ad sales track record in the business. Capitalizing on these key strengths, we are taking a unique approach to streaming that brings value to customers, advertisers and shareholders.”

Peacock will feature multiple tiers of service, at least two available for free:

• Peacock Free: This ad-supported tier (promised to include only five minutes of ads per hour) will be available to all and will feature about half of Peacock’s content library (7,500 hours). Similar to Hulu’s basic service, this free tier will offer next-day access to currently airing NBC TV series, entire seasons of selected older shows, selected movies, news, and sports programming. Some of Peacock’s original series will also be available on the free tier, along with a selection of clips and shows highlighting NBC content like Saturday Night Live, Family Movie Night, and the Olympics.
• Peacock for Authenticated TV Subscribers (free): If you are a current Comcast or Cox cable TV subscriber, you can get Peacock’s Premium offering with a complete selection of Peacock content at no charge. This tier offers 15,000 hours of live/on-demand content, but has advertising. You can get rid of the ads by paying an extra $5 a month.
• Peacock Premium: If you are a cord-cutter or do not subscribe to a TV package with a Comcast-partnered provider, you can subscribe directly to Peacock’s premium, ad-free version for $10 a month. This unlocks the complete lineup of Peacock content.

NBCUniversal officials also used today’s event to announce more original programming deals beyond those already announced, including new original comedies from Tina Fey, Sky Studios, Mindy Kaling and Amy Poehler. Almost all of Dick Wolf’s ubiquitous Law & Order (and its various spinoff series) will also be available for streaming, as will his current roster of Chicago-based series Fire, P.D., and Med. Peacock Premium customers will also be able to stream NBC’s late-night shows before they air on NBC. The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon will be available as early as 8 p.m. ET and Late Night with Seth Meyers will be available by 9 p.m.

Peacock will enter a very crowded field of streaming services, and is the last previously announced streaming service to launch, likely shortly after AT&T launches HBO Max. The fact there will be a free version may make the service more palatable to consumers weary of subscribing to yet another paid streaming service, on top of Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, and a range of specialty streaming services featuring international programming, sports, movies, and documentaries.

Comcast is planning to debut its new streaming TV platform under the NBC “Peacock” brand next April with a lineup of original shows starring well-known talent including Alec Baldwin, Demi Moore, Christian Slater, and Ed Helms.

Peacock will most closely resemble the advertiser-supported Hulu platform, with 21 million Comcast cable television customers getting access for free. Comcast is reportedly also negotiating with other cable, satellite, and telco TV providers about bundling free basic Peacock subscriptions for their cable TV customers as well. Those who never subscribed to cable TV or cut the cord will be offered the option of a lower cost, commercial-filled subscription or a more expensive ad-free option, presumably at prices similar to what Hulu charges ($5.99-11.99).

Peacock’s subscription model is designed to protect Comcast’s cable TV revenue. For existing Comcast cable TV customers, giving ad-supported subscriptions away for free may add to the value proposition of keeping a cable TV subscription. By charging subscription fees to everyone else, Comcast is not ‘giving away the store for free.’ If it did, it could upset other pay television companies that are facing ever-rising retransmission consent fees and programming costs for Comcast/NBC-owned TV stations and cable networks including CNBC, MSNBC, and the USA Network.

Comcast is confident its long experience offering streaming TV Everywhere services including live streaming and on demand programming will mean it will not face the kinds of scaling mistakes other streaming services have had. Bonnie Hammer, the NBCUniversal executive appointed to run Peacock, believes the service’s deep content catalog, starting with 15,000 hours of NBC and Universal Studios TV shows and movies complimented with other acquired and original productions will give viewers plenty to watch.

“I’m not sure anybody else out there can do what we can do,” Hammer told the Wall Street Journal. “We expect to have great content and a great product [that] is really easy to use.”

In addition to scripted content, Peacock will also feature live and recorded news and sports programming from NBC.

Among the shows featured on the Peacock platform:

Original Drama Series

ANGELYNE (limited series)
Limited series based on The Hollywood Reporter feature that explored the identity of L.A.’s mysterious billboard bombshell.

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA
Battlestar Galactica reboot.

BRAVE NEW WORLD
Based on Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel, Brave New World. The series envisions life in a utopian society that bans monogamy, privacy, money, and never discusses history.

DR. DEATH
Inspired by a podcast by the same name. Dr. Death follows the true story of Dr. Christopher Duntsch (played by Jamie Dornan), a rising star in the Dallas medical community who also emerges as a deadly sociopath. Duntsch’s successful neurosurgery practice gradually deteriorates into a horror show of permanently disabled or dead patients. Two fellow doctors, played by Alec Baldwin and Christian Slater, fight an entrenched medical bureaucracy designed to protect money-making doctors to get his practice shut down.

ONE OF US IS LYING (pilot)
Based on the novel One of Us Is Lying, the crime series follows the unfolding of events after five people spend an afternoon in detention, but only four leave alive.

UNTITLED REAL HOUSEWIVES SPINOFF (no details provided)

Original Comedy Series

A.P. BIO (Season 3)
Picks up where the original NBC TV series left off. When disgraced Harvard philosophy professor Jack Griffin (Glenn Howerton) loses out on his dream job to his rival Miles Leonard (Tom Bennett), he is forced to return to the small town Toledo, Ohio and work as an advanced placement biology teacher at the fictional Whitlock High School. Jack makes it clear to his class that he will not be teaching any biology. Realising he has a room full of honor-roll students at his disposal, Jack decides to use them for his own benefit: getting revenge on Miles. Eager to prove that he is still king of the castle, Principal Durbin (Patton Oswalt) struggles to keep Griffin under control.

PUNKY BREWSTER (pilot)
This continues of the iconic 80s sitcom about a bright young girl raised by a foster dad features Punky as a now single mother of three trying to get her life back on track when she meets a young girl who reminds her a lot of her younger self.

RUTHERFORD FALLS
A small town in upstate New York is turned upside down when local legend and town namesake, Nathan Rutherford (Ed Helms) fights the moving of a historical statue.

SAVED BY THE BELL (reboot)
When California governor Zack Morris gets into hot water for closing too many low-income high schools, he proposes they send the affected students to the highest performing schools in the state – including Bayside High. The influx of new students gives the over-privileged Bayside kids a reality check.

STRAIGHT TALK
Straight Talk examines what happens when two opposing ideologies are forced into an odd coupling. The main characters will be challenged by one another, making the moral lines at which they once stood harder to define.

Original Unscripted Shows 

THE AMBER RUFFIN SHOW
A weekly show featuring Amber’s “signature smart-and-silly take on the week.” The show will de-emphasize talking with guests and spend more time on comedy routines.

WHO WROTE THAT
A docuseries designed to showcase Saturday Night Live’s comedy writers.

Original Made-for-Peacock TV Movie

PSYCH 2: LASSIE COME HOME
Based on the USA Network show Psych, Santa Barbara Police Chief Carlton Lassiter is ambushed on the job and left for dead. In a vintage Psych-style Hitchcockian nod, he begins to see impossible happenings around his recovery clinic. Shawn and Gus return to Lassie’s side in Santa Barbara and are forced to navigate the personal, the professional, and possibly the supernatural. Separated from their new lives in San Francisco, our heroes find themselves unwelcome in their old stomping grounds as they secretly untangle a twisted case without the benefit of the police, their loved ones, or the quality sourdough bakeries of the Bay Area. What they uncover will change the course of their relationships forever.

Legacy Shows in the Peacock Catalog

Bates Motel
Brooklyn Nine-Nine
Cheers
Chrisley Knows Best
Covert Affairs
Downton Abbey
Everybody Loves Raymond
Frasier
Friday Night Lights
House
Keeping Up with the Kardashians
The King of Queens
Married … with Children
Monk
Parks and Recreation (exclusive, available Oct. 2020)
Parenthood
The Office (exclusive, available Jan. 2021)
Psych
The Real Housewives
Royal Pains
Saturday Night Live
Superstore
30 Rock
Top Chef
Will & Grace
100 Dias Para Volver (Spanish-language)
Betty in NY (Spanish-language)
El Barón (Spanish-language)
Preso No. 1 (Spanish-language)

Peacock’s Legacy Movies Catalog

American Pie
Back to the Future
A Beautiful Mind
Bourne franchise
The Breakfast Club
Bridesmaids
Brokeback Mountain
Casino
Dallas Buyers Club
Despicable Me franchise
Do the Right Thing
Erin Brockovich
E.T. The Extra Terrestrial
Fast & Furious
Field of Dreams
Jaws
Knocked Up
Mamma Mia!
Meet the Fockers
Meet the Parents
Shrek

Comcast-owned NBCUniversal today announced a 2020 launch of a new, advertiser-supported streaming service, relying on content libraries and distribution platforms from America’s NBCUniversal and Europe’s Sky.

In a press release about the new venture, NBCUniversal claims the service will reach over 90 million U.S. households and will include “some of the world’s most popular television and film franchises, including homegrown original programming as well as content from outside partners.”

The new service is a rare reminder that the cable industry’s “TV Everywhere” project — offering streamed and on-demand content to “authenticated pay television customers” is still alive and kicking. NBCUniversal plans to offer the service to consumers for free, as long as they can prove they have an active cable or satellite TV subscription. Comcast and Sky will be the first to debut the service to their combined 52 million subscribers, with other providers likely to offer the service sometime later. Cord cutters will be able to purchase a subscription to the service, and a paid, ad-free option will also be available.

TV Everywhere, the cable industry’s effort to make on-demand content available for little or no charge, as long as you are an “authenticated pay-TV customer.”

NBCUniversal also announced an executive shuffle to reposition itself for the streaming venture. With Comcast’s 2018 acquisition of Sky, Europe’s largest satellite television provider, the yet-to-be-named streaming venture will draw talent from both sides of the Atlantic. Programming is expected to rely heavily on both NBCUniversal-owned content and a growing library of original shows and movies produced by Sky. European audiences will see more American programming and Americans will have greater access to popular Sky content, particularly from the United Kingdom and Ireland.

The new streaming service represents an acknowledgment that traditional live, linear television is becoming less important as viewers increasingly shift towards on-demand viewing. NBCUniversal itself has recognized a trend away from live niche programming, and has closed down some of its lower-rated cable networks, including Cloo and Esquire. Original content on some lesser-known basic cable networks often amounts to little more than an hour or two a day, with the rest of the schedule populated with program length commercials or reruns of older network shows. Since NBCUniversal has a deep library of both original and older programming, it can offer viewers on-demand access to new shows and old favorites, attracting younger audiences.

“People are watching premium content more than ever, but they want more flexibility and value,” said NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke. “NBCUniversal is perfectly positioned to offer a variety of choices, due to our deep relationships with advertisers and distribution partners, as well as our data-targeting capabilities. Advertising continues to be a major part of the entertainment ecosystem and we believe that a streaming service, with limited and personalized ads, will provide a great consumer experience.”

For now, Comcast/NBCUniversal will retain a 30% ownership in the Hulu venture.

Cord-cutting in Boston is getting more difficult if you are an NBC fan. Comcast, which owns NBC/Universal, has terminated its affiliation agreement with full-power Boston station WHDH and is moving NBC programming in Boston to a little-watched television station in New Hampshire currently affiliated with Telemundo.

Northeast Radio Watch reports major confusion in Boston over the network affiliation change that will relocate NBC’s programming for the most-viewed NBC affiliate in Massachusetts to a lower-powered station in another state.

The change takes place Jan. 1, 2017, and some Boston viewers are likely to have trouble getting a good over-the-air picture for NBC programming unless they subscribe to cable… which coincidentally is also provided primarily by Comcast.

Much of southeast Massachusetts will lose access to NBC shows, unless they subscribe to cable.

Sunbeam-owned WHDH-TV 7 has been Boston’s NBC affiliate since Jan. 2, 1995. For years, the relationship between Sunbeam and Comcast/NBCUniversal has been frosty because of station and affiliation disputes in other cities. On Dec. 15, 2015, Comcast informed WHDH management its NBC affiliation contract would not be renewed. Comcast then offered to buy what would certainly be a financially compromised WHDH for $200 million, prompting Sunbeam owner Ed Ansin to declare Comcast/NBC was “trying to steal our station.”

Comcast has decided on a suitable replacement to serve as Boston’s NBC affiliate – a small station 50 miles away in Merrimack, N.H., currently providing Spanish-speaking audiences with Telemundo programming.

WNEU-TV 34 runs an 80-kilowatt transmitter west of Manchester, N.H.,a pittance compared to the 1,000-kilowatt transmitter powering WHDH, located in suburban Boston.

“This has been NBC’s weak spot, and for all the talk about how Comcast will buy this or that other station, it’s going to war with the signals it has, not the signals it wants to have,” writes Scott Fybush, editor of Northeast Radio Watch. “That means WNEU, the Merrimack, N.H.-licensed signal that’s been carrying Telemundo, will be the only full-power home of NBC Boston, serving viewers in New Hampshire and (if they’re equipped with a decent antenna) parts of the Merrimack Valley.”

Even Comcast recognizes the political controversy that is likely to erupt as a substantial portion of Boston’s cord-cutting over-the-air audience loses access to NBC unless they sign up for Comcast Cable or another pay television provider. So NBC has also arranged to buy low-power station WBTS-LD 46, which also currently airs Telemundo programming for the benefit of Boston residents within Route 128. WBTS does not come close to providing a good signal throughout Boston either, and Fybush notes over-the-air viewers in Worcester or on the South Shore are going to be out of luck.

“NBC acknowledges you probably won’t be seeing them over the air for now,” Fybush notes.

Comcast has also given its new NBC affiliate prime positioning on the Comcast lineup. NBC programming in Boston will appear on cable channel 10, with the HD feed on channel 810, bumping NECN-HD to channel 840. NBC has also reached private agreements with satellite providers to put NBC Boston of channel 10 as well.

The change means cord-cutters will be seriously disadvantaged in Boston, struggling to get a decent digital picture from a station never considered a primary Boston signal. For WHDH, it strands the station without any major network affiliation. In an effort to stay viable, WHDH intends to rebrand as a news-focused station that will air multiple local newscasts during the primetime hours of 7-11:30pm, unless another network comes along with an offer.