Peacock

The NFL is breaking new ground this season with a September game in Brazil, the first time a regular-season contest will take place in South America. The Week 1 game will be exclusively streamed on Peacock, giving NBCUniversal three stand-alone games in the first week of the season.

Peacock’s Apples Never Fall was the top show in TVision’s Power Score rankings of shows on connected TV for the week of March 11. All seven episodes of Apples Never Fall, based on Liane Moriarty’s best-selling novel, were released on March 14.

NBCUniversal‘s Peacock deal to exclusively stream the NFL‘s AFC Wild Card matchup between the Kansas City Chief and the Miami Dolphins delivered an end-zone spiking TD for the streamer, according to new data. NBCU already claimed the Jan. 13 playoff game was the biggest live-streamed event in U.S. history — delivering an average audience of 23 million viewers. While NBCU didn’t quantify the lift in Peacock subscriptions the game yielded, a new report from research firm Antenna puts a number on it: Peacock saw a total of 2.8 million sign-ups over NFL Wild Card Game weekend. According to Antenna, that makes the Chiefs-Dolphins game the single biggest subscriber acquisition event it has ever measured.

The first exclusively streaming playoff game boosts the debut of the Ted series on NBCUniversal’s streamer.

Saturday night’s game will be shown on Peacock after NBCUniversal won the rights last May. The game will be broadcast on the NBC affiliates in Kansas City and Miami, following the NFL’s protocol for Thursday night games streamed on Amazon Prime Video. Everyone else will have to pay for a Peacock subscription — plans start at $5.99 per month — to watch the game, and some fans are less than thrilled about the NFL putting a playoff game behind a paywall for the first time.

The game, between the Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins, is the biggest test yet for whether live sports will find a comfortable home on streaming services.

The biggest ratings force in American television is about to kick off high holy postseason services, but ridiculous impediments for the rapt audience await.

The Dec. 23 contest, the first to be exclusively on Peacock, will be commercial free. NBCUniversal says there will be a 40% reduction in the standard ad time for an NFL game that should result in at least 12 additional minutes of game-related content.

Peacock now has 30 million paid subscribers, Comcast President Mike Cavanagh revealed during an investor conference hosted by UBS on Monday. The latest figure comes after the streaming service topped 28 million paid subs during the NBCUniversal parent’s third quarter report. Cavanagh reiterated previous guidance that the service is projected to hit peak losses of $2.8 billion in 2023.

Former Apple and AMC PR exec Bernadette Simpao has joined NBCUniversal‘s Media Group as SVP of strategic communications, where she will have a specific focus on streamer Peacock. Simpao, who is based in New York, will report to Allison Rawlings, NBCU Media Group EVP of communications.

Peacock continues to expand its Bravo streaming offerings. NBCUniversal’s streaming platform will be the official home to uncensored versions of future reunion episodes for all the cable network’s reality programming, Bravo host and executive producer Andy Cohen revealed Friday during the “Ask Andy” panel at BravoCon in Las Vegas.

“With Peacock, now we have the most live sports of any of the streaming services,” CEO Brian Roberts said on today’s earnings call. “I believe that’s a surprise to many people when they learn that. He said the streamer’s growth, and the sports component that’s helping to drive it, sets Comcast up for being “more relevant” during a transition: “how we go from analog to digital in a way that helps the leagues.”

Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building leapt onto Nielsen’s streaming charts for the week of August 7 to August 13. With the debut of Season 3, the series racked up 719M viewing minutes, making it to No. 9 on the overall Top 10 and No. 3 among streaming originals. According to Nielsen, the audience for Only Murders was a “carbon copy” of the series that’s been dominating streaming for the past eight weeks — Suits. That series had another impressive week with 3B viewing minutes once again across Netflix and Peacock.

Netflix and Peacock have a hot commodity on their hands with Suits. The USA Network series debuted on both platforms in June and subsequently broke a Nielsen streaming record for acquired programming. Well, Suits has now broken that same record two weeks in a row after racking up 3.7 billion viewing minutes during the week of July 3-9. That’s up an impressive 17% from the previous measurement week, when the series first broke the record for most-watched acquired content in a single week with 3.1 billion minutes viewed.

Not much has changed on Days of Our Lives following an investigation into misconduct allegations against co-executive producer/director Albert Alarr and a toxic work environment he and his team allegedly fostered, with Alarr still in charge at the venerable daytime drama. Now the DoOL cast are taking things into their own hands, with a petition that calls for a new leader on the show, which streams on Peacock. It has been signed by more than 25 cast members to date.

Days of Our Lives vet Lisa Rinna is reacting to a scathing report alleging workplace misconduct at the hands of longtime co-executive producer/director Albert Alarr. Alarr was the subject of a nine-week internal investigation amid complaints that he had been “abusive” to staffers, making them “feel uncomfortable and humiliated.”

Peacock is the latest streaming platform to get a price hike, and the first for the NBCUniversal service since launching in summer 2020. The studio said existing Peacock subscribers will see the price for the Premium service rise by $1 a month to $5.99, starting on Aug. 17. And the Premium Plus tier — which offers viewers mostly no ads, episode downloads and live, local NBC channels — will increase by $2 monthly to $11.99.

At $1.66 a month, the discount is $30 off the annual $50 price for the base Peacock Premium package.

The league and NBCUniversal announced Monday that the Saturday night game on wild card weekend will be on Peacock. The Peacock exclusive game on Jan. 13 would start at 8:15 or 8:30 p.m. ET. The game will be broadcast on NBC stations in the markets of the two teams. It will also be available on mobile devices through the NFL+ package. It will be preceded by a late afternoon playoff game on NBC and Peacock that will kick off at 4:30 p.m. ET.

Time to get more sand for the hourglass. Days of Our Lives has been renewed by Peacock for two more seasons, which means the iconic soap opera will make it to at least its landmark 60th season. Days moved to Peacock in September, having previously aired on NBC since 1965. It was NBC’s longest-running drama series before switching to Peacock in 2022.

The People’s Choice Awards are expanding. NBCUniversal revealed that there will now be an entire ceremony dedicated to country music. The People’s Choice Country Awards will air in September across NBC and Peacock, live from the world-famous Grand Ole Opry stage in Nashville.

In a sign of the times, Peacock and independent network Reelz have struck an unusual carriage deal putting the linear channel and on-demand programming onto the NBCUniversal streaming service. Taking effect tomorrow, the pact will add exposure for Reelz nonscripted hit On Patrol: Live, the police docuseries hosted by Dan Abrams, who had been behind Live P.D. on A&E. New episodes of the show, which is produced by Big Fish Entertainment’s Half Moon Pictures, will be available live on Peacock on Friday and Saturday nights, with on-demand access the following day.