NBC's Streaming Service 'Peacock' Launching in July With Three Subscription Tiers

Thursday January 16, 2020 12:54 pm PST by Juli Clover

NBC today announced that its upcoming Peacock streaming video service is set to launch in the United States on July 15.

The service, which will offer upwards 7,500 hours of programming including NBC shows and Universal movies, will features three subscription tiers.

nbc peacock
NBC will offer an ad-supported tier that people can watch for free, and there will be two premium paid tiers that include live sports and early access to NBC's late night shows.

The $4.99 per month premium tier will include ads, while a $9.99 per month version will be available ad-free. Providing access to live sports will allow NBC to differentiate the Peacock service from Disney+, Netflix, and Apple TV+.

In addition to on-demand content and live sports, Peacock will include live breaking news coverage, same-day rebroadcasts, curated shorts, and access to "Dateline" and "NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt." Premium subscribers will get exclusive access to additional TV shows and movies, for a total of 15,000 hours of content.

Peacock will also include original TV shows and films, such as Tina Fey's upcoming "Girls5Eva" and an adaptation of the classic Aldous Huxley novel "Brave New World."

Customers who already subscribe to Comcast and Cox can get free access to the premium with ads version of Peacock, or pay $5 per month for the ad-free version. Comcast X1 and Flex customers will get access to Peacock on April 15, months ahead of the July 15 launch date.

More details on Peacock are available through the investor webcast that NBC shared today and accompanying PDFs that list all of the movies and TV shows that will be accessible with Peacock.

Tags: NBC, Apple TV Plus Guide, Peacock

Top Rated Comments

Unity451

48 months ago

At least they'll have an ad-supported tier. I'm not paying for something that I could technically get for free over broadcast. (Ya hear that CBS-All Access?)

Score: 17 Votes (Like | Disagree)

LawJolla

Content siloing continues...

Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)

PickUrPoison

The difference between the two ad-supported tiers is Peacock Premium (the $5 tier) includes all of the episodes of the original programming whereas Peacock Free (the free tier) only includes select episodes. Premium also includes early access to late night talk shows and additional sports (including Premier League Soccer).

I think it’s a bit of a stretch to call any ad-supported tier “Premium”.

I can understand them not wanting to call it “Basic”, but I personally don’t consider any stream with ads to be premium. Premium with ads isn’t really all that... premium.

Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)

I’m not paying anything if there’s ads, it should be like Spotify then.

Edit: So the first tier is free and ad supported and the second is $5 and ad supported?

So there is a free tier with ads and a $4.99 per month tier that also includes ads?

The $4.99 tier does have ads, but you also get sports and early access to certain shows. Also more shows and movies than the free tier.

Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)

smoking monkey

What is the breaking point? Will people look at it and allocate 40 bucks a month to streaming? How much did cable cost? Or will people just look at this as being too fractured and slide back into pirating content because it's easier.

I prefer to pay for ad-free streams, but $10 is pretty steep. This sounds like a “subscribe twice a year for a month” type of service for me. That would bring it in at under $2/month. If the content is really good, may 3 or 4 times a year.

Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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