Image: The Voice (US), NBC
Comcast reported earnings on Thursday, largely beating revenue and earnings expectations while Peacock continued to report losses (although at a slower pace than last quarter). What may have received less attention is how the company’s flagship streamer is well positioned to ride out the ongoing double strike that has brought the industry to its knees. The WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes will impact all players in the industry differently, but Parrot’s demand data shows how Peacock may be poised to survive a prolonged work stoppage by leveraging two key NBCUniversal TV assets: Bravo and NBC’s Sunday Night Football.
Of major US SVODs, reality shows made up the largest share of demand for shows available to stream on Peacock. 22.4% of demand for shows on Peacock in June was for a reality series. Max came in a close second with a 21.8% share of demand for reality shows on its platform. Warner Bros. Discovery’s recent decision to make a majority of the Discovery+ catalog available to stream on Max significantly boosted the platform’s reality offering - a decision that is looking prescient given the ongoing strikes.
Bravo‘s Vanderpump Rules and The Real Housewives franchise are consistently among the most in-demand reality series with US audiences. Vanderpump Rules topped out at 37x more demand than the average show in the US in May and June, placing it in the top 0.2% of all shows across all platforms during the peak of ‘Scandoval.’ NBCUniversal also oversees the number one reality show with US audiences last quarter: NBC’s The Voice. This type of content is unlikely to be impacted by the strikes, and these series are positioned to even gain audiences as consumers run out of new scripted series to watch.
The Voice was not only the most in-demand reality series available to stream on Peacock in June, it had the most demand of any reality series in the US with 36.5 times the average series demand. Even though The Voice may have been the gem in Peacock’s reality crown, content from Bravo is the real driver of the platform’s strength in the reality genre. 43% of demand for reality series on Peacock was for a Bravo show.
NBC’s Sunday Night Football — broadcast TV’s number one primetime series for 12 years and counting — kicks off in just six weeks. With new scripted linear series likely being sidelined this Fall due to the work stoppages, SNF is poised to further increase its already massive audience. This not only helps the broadcast network, but also gives NBCUniversal an even bigger platform to promote Peacock.
It looks as though Peacock’s recent price hike may have come at just the right time, as the streamer is likely to rely more on the proven loyalty of Bravo and NFL audiences, which could help begin to turn around the streamer’s financial losses over the past several years. When we last analyzed the value streamers in the US were delivering compared to their subscription price, Peacock Premium had some wiggle room to raise prices while staying competitive. In the near term, as the impacts of the strikes are felt on the pipeline of content fueling streaming platforms, Peacock looks comparatively well positioned with its reality and live sports assets to weather the storm and maybe even get a leg up on its competitors.
