Peacock has a great first quarter, they only lost $634 million

[Mike Blakesley]

Peacock is apparently in high spirits as they only lost $634 million dollars in Q1 this year. They lost $704 million in the same quarter last year, and $825 million the year before that. (Feels like I'm writing an article for "The Onion.")

From Hollywood Reporter article:

Peacock, the streaming service of Comcast’s entertainment unit NBCUniversal, grew its first-quarter revenue and narrowed its loss to $639 million from $704 million in the year-ago period, and $825 million in the fourth quarter of 2023, despite higher programming costs. The streamer ended March with 34 million paying subscribers, compared with a year-end 2023 figure of 31 million, the company also said on Thursday.

“Peacock paid subscribers increased 55 percent compared to the prior-year period to 34 million, including net additions of 3 million in the first quarter,” Comcast highlighted. “Peacock revenue increased 54 percent to $1.1 billion.”

Keep in mind these figures are only for a quarter, so that means they'll be losing closer to $2 billion this year. To accomplish this, they had to increase their subscribers by 55%. I am too tired to do enough math to figure out how they're ever going to get to profitability with these kinds of numbers.

Way of the future, my ass! Unless I'm severely misinterpreting things.

Here's a link to the article if you want to read the whole thing.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/bu...4126d6de3de07b

[Steve Guttag]

Whether they like it or not, this is all heading towards the cable model...just without the cable/fiber part (except for the internet access itself). NOBODY wants to subscribe to a bunch of platforms to get what they want and we all have enough diverse interests that no platform, as it stands, will have it all. We need to get to a single subscription system that has what you want. You could have 2-3 massive streaming platforms that carry most of what is out there.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

There is one streaming platform that has over 26,000 movies and about 3500 TV shows, and that's Prime. They also produce many films and tv shows themselves, some darn.good ones too. "Marvelous Mrs Maisel" and "A Million.Miles Away"are just a couple. Like to watch old tee vee shows? There is Pluto TV, and it's free. I can't imagine needing any other streaming services...

[Harold Hallikainen]

An alternative to subscriptions to a bunch of different services is pay per view where anyone could watch anything by paying for it and not having to subscribe to the thousands of things they do not watch. We sort of have this now with subscription churn. We got a free 1 week subscription to Acorn, watched a series, and then cancelled.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

An alternative to subscriptions to a bunch of different services is pay per view where anyone could watch anything by paying for it and not having to subscribe to the thousands of things they do not watch. We sort of have this now with subscription churn. We got a free 1 week subscription to Acorn, watched a series, and then cancelled.

Prime can be used that way as well. There is the free stuff, pay stuff, and stuff with commercials. Or you get it all free if you're a prime member.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Or you get it all free if you're a prime member.

I want to be on your prime family account. LOL. Hardly any of it is free. Granted a bunch of the Amazon originals are, and a bunch of B-movie back-catalog. But as far as free selection, I feel amazon is about the worst of them. Even the free ones can now run ads unless you upgrade to an even higher tier of prime (2.99$ more).

Though if you don't care about the shipping discounts, they do have a prime video only tier at least.

Part of me thinks that these channels/studios run these siloed content streaming services at a loss intentionally as a perk to encourage people to keep paying for actual cable (to get access to them), basically embrace the new model just enough to keep people hooked on the old model?

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

We are Prime members, so we get Prime streaming and Amazon music included. Prime is presently $139 a year. That's about 12 bucks a month. So you get movies, music and free next day delivery, or same day more often than not at my place because of a near by super size wearehouse. So, no beefs here... If they charge a premium for movies currently in release I haven't noticed on my Credit Card, they supposedly do, but we usually go see them at the movies, especially since we finally found a decent MPX.

[Mike Blakesley]

Prime is a joke. If it's TV you want, they usually have "Season 1" and then you have to pay for other seasons. Their interface mixes their own content with other services that bug you to subscribe to them or get a "free preview" which is basically just another subscription you have to remember to cancel. Maybe it's my movie taste, but they almost never have a movie that I actually want to watch. And of course now Prime wants an extra 3 bucks a month to not have un-skippable commercials. Considering Prime has doubled in price from its origin, while reducing their service. (Remember the free two-day shipping? I knew that was a bait-and-switch proposition, and sure enough. You guys who live near a distribution center are lucky... here, it's usually 7 days and they don't even offer an option to pay extra for faster.)

It's not exactly a killer deal anymore.

[Ryan Gallagher]

If ya are into back catalog Art House stuff... I still feel like MUBI is the best cinema streaming subscription out there (catalog/curation wise). I gave up netflix when I started using it.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

So far, of the stuff Paula or I wanted too watch, they have had all the seasons that have been aired so far... But I will admit that I am hardly a die hard tv watcher like she is. I'd rather watch a Blu-Ray over streaming any day.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

If ya are into back catalog Art House stuff... I still feel like MUBI is the best cinema streaming subscription out there (catalog/curation wise). I gave up netflix when I started using it.

If I had my choice, there wouldn't even be a tv here. I go to our local art house at least monthly. It's a top notch place, and not very far away, and I finally found a decent Plex as well.

[Harold Hallikainen]

We go to our local art house (Loft Cinema) at least once a week (Monday for members at $3 and Thursdays for Hollywood Classic - we saw On The Waterfront yesterday).

[Steve Guttag]

I dislike Prime the most of the ones we are subscribed to. I do use Amazon for buying some things. I HATE the Prime UI for their movies...it's horrific jumbled mess. I do watch old TV shows (or have them on in the background while I'm working on things)...you might start watching a series and when you get to say season 3...bam...no longer prime but would you like to pay $2 an episode to watch the rest?. Now if you don't mind the pay-per-view model, then yes, Prime will give you access to most everything (well more than others).

I've found that most of the streaming services original content to be sub-par, when it comes to features...they feel like low-budget movies. They get some big actors in them and they have their better ones but, in general, I'm not too impressed with their features. Some of their series are pretty impressive (e.g. Breaking Bad). I like Netflix's style the best. It is the easiest to use and everything you see is included in the subscription...none of this interspersed pay/free/sorta-free crap. One of the downsides of getting into a Netflix series is that they often kill a series after 2-3 seasons. Hulu has been decent enough, for what it has too for both original content (e.g. "The Bear") and how they set up their platform. They often have decent classic TV selections too.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I dislike Prime the most of the ones we are subscribed to. I do use Amazon for buying some things. I HATE the Prime UI for their movies...it's horrific jumbled mess. I do watch old TV shows (or have them on in the background while I'm working on things)...you might start watching a series and when you get to say season 3...bam...no longer prime but would you like to pay $2 an episode to watch the rest?

I have yet to see any decent interface for selecting a movie, show, etc on any streaming site. Not a one of them can be read from my chair 12 feet from a 60 inch screen, and I have 10/20 vision! If there is a bad aspect of all the streamers it is the interface. And as I said, so far I am not seeing any "extra charges" on my CC for premium movies, etc, and I've had Prime here for over two years.

As for old shows, check out Pluto TV. It's all free, and only one commercial per show. There are actually more old TV shows there than on Prime. It's owned by Paramount streaming, and there is a decent interface, actually very different from the others. Yet Paramount Streaming's interface is as bad as all the others.

[Harold Hallikainen]

On streaming UI (now called UX), I ignore the pretty pictures with unreadable text and just use the search feature. Another annoying thing about several of the UIs is that if you click on the pretty picture to read more about the content, it starts playing the content. As I recall, Netflix has a setting to disable that, but they seem to ignore the setting.