Comcast today said it is planning a January 2020 meeting to provide further details about its upcoming ad-supported streaming service, Peacock.
The investor meeting will be held on Thursday, January 16 at 4 p.m. EST, and will be webcast live from Comcast’s investor relations website. Comcast didn’t provide any details about what the meeting will cover, and only said it will address the “overarching strategy for the platform.”
NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke, speaking at an investor conference in October, said that Peacock will have a mix of originals, exclusive acquisitions like “The Office,” and a lot of non-exclusive content. But he assured investors that Comcast/NBCUniversal will continue licensing content to other platforms like HBO.
Peacock is planning to debut in April and it will use the 2020 Summer Olympics as an “afterburner” after the launch. Burke said that NBCU will add a significant amount of content throughout 2020.
RELATED: Comcast might make Peacock free for everyone, report says
NBC is planning to offer Peacock for free to its Comcast and Sky pay TV subscribers along with a subscription tier for consumers that don’t subscribe to Comcast’s pay TV services. But recent reports from CNBC (which is owned by Comcast) suggest that the company will make the service free for everyone to use.
NBCUniversal has been quiet regarding details about Peacock and Burke said that’s because of “competitive reasons.” But the company has made it clear that it won’t be competing against Netflix, and will stick to the ad-supported side of streaming.
“We’re primarily working with the existing ecosystem and doing a lot of AVOD activity. What that’s going to do, we think, is cut the investment pretty substantially because I think we’re going to get to cruising altitude much more quickly than a subscription service,” Burke said.