Comcast's New Peacock Streaming Service In January 2020, Comcast and its subsidiary NBCUniversal, jointly announced the launch of a new Peacock subscription video streaming service that would become available at no additional cost for Comcast's more than 20 million Xfinity X1 and Flex cable subscribers on April 15 and then launch July 15 for everyone else. The free tier of Peacock (Peacock Free) contained more than 7,500 hours of ad-supported programming, including next-day access to first season TV shows broadcast on NBC, a collect tion of Universal movies, and access to back seasons of such iconic NBC shows as Saturday Night Live, Family Movie Night, and Vault. However, Comcast subscribers and Cox cable subscriber could opt instead to subscribe to Peacock Premium, which included 15,000 hours of content, early access to NBC's 2 late night shows, live NBC sports programming, and non-televised Premier League soccer games. There were two price tiers for Peacock Premium: a $4.99 per month version that included ads and a $9.99 version with no advertising. Steven Burke, a Comcast Executive Vice President and Chairman of NBCUniversal believed NBCUniversal was uniquely positioned to create a streaming platform that would monetize its content library and enable NBCUniversal to play a leading role in the on-demand video streaming world: Comcast management decided to use NBC's familiar peacock logo as the logo for the company's new subscription-based streaming service to remind customers that NBC was a network with great program- ming and to drive interest back to NBC's popular event- type TV programs (The Masked Singer, The Last Voice, America's Got Talent) and NBC's live sports program- ming, which included the 2020 Summer Olympics. Top management at Comcast and NBCUniversal believed that while streamed video might indeed be the future of watching TV and movies, the cable business would remain profitable for years to come (despite the likely permanent declines in the number of cable and satellite subscribers worldwide) and, further, that free ad-supported viewing was likely to remain far more preva- lent and popular with consumers than subscription- supported viewing. Comcast management believedthat bundling Peacock Free for customers with Comcast cable subscriptions would help reduce the number of customers dropping the company's cable service and switching to a rival streaming provider. Hence, they saw no good business reason to create a streaming platform with strategy elements that would help undermine the protability and longevity of company's cable business. During a Peacock Investor Day presentation on January 16, 2020, a NBCUnjversal ofcer cited a survey where consumers were asked \"Which new streaming service are you likely to tryone that is free with some ads or one that is paid with no ads?\" Eighty percent responded \"free with some ads,\" and 20 percent responded \"paid with no ads.\" These results were a factor in convincing the Comcast-NBCUniversal man- agement team to position Peacock as an adsupported streamer of premium content in what they viewed as a mostly vacant market niche (among rival video streaming providers, only Hulu offered consum- ers a low-priced, adsupported streaming option). Moreover, the Peacock strategy was to help secure a competitive edge by having an industry-low aver- age of five minutes of ads per hour, which contrasted sharply with TV broadcasting where there were 1620 minutes of ads per hour and premium video streaming where there was an average of eight minutes of ads per hour.6 And Peacock Free's ad-supported streaming of premium content helped differentiate it from the three competitively strong subscription- based providersNetflix, Amazon Prime Video. and HBO Max. Peacock management believed it would have little difficulty selling ads for Peacock's content, given that NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, and some 250 other channels had advertising-based business mod- els representing 92 percent of total viewership.7 NBCUniversal said it would invest $2 billion in Peacock over 2020 and 2021, with goals of reach- ing between 30 and 35 million active users in the United States by 2024, generating $2.5 billion in new revenues with average revenue per subscriber of $6-$7, and achieving break even on Peacock's streaming ser- vice on an earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) basis