NBCUniversal to Launch Standalone Streaming TV Service in 2020

Comcast's NBCUniversal is planning to launch its own ad-supported streaming television service in the first quarter of 2020, the company announced today.

The upcoming service will be available for free to anyone that subscribes to a traditional pay-TV service, including TV service from Comcast and its competitors, like Charter, AT&T, Cox, and Dish.

Customers that do not subscribe to a paid television service will need to pay a fee that's right around $12 per month to access NBC content.

Content will include 1,500 hours of NBC TV shows, like "Saturday Night Live" and "Parks and Recreation, hundreds of hours of Universal movies, and live TV-like news and sports. NBC plans to air between three to five minutes of ads per hour of programming, with the aim to make $5 per month for every user on advertising alone.

"One of the interesting things about this that makes it different and innovative is that we'll have a big emphasis on free-to-consumer," Burke said. "We want to create a platform that has significant scale and can scale quickly. The best way to do that, is make it free to consumers and leverage the fact that NBCUniversal's sister company is a cable company and now owns Sky."

NBC still needs to sign deals with other pay-TV providers, something that it hasn't yet accomplished. Since it will be free for subscribers, though, NBC doesn't foresee issues with negotiations.

Though NBC is planning its own streaming service, the company says it will not be "aggressively" pulling back shows and movies it has licensed to other streaming services.