NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke just told media analysts and reporters that his company’s upcoming streaming service, Peacock, is decidedly not Netflix.
“We’re not doing the same strategy that Netflix and people chasing Netflix have adopted,” Burke said on a Thursday morning conference call tied to NBCU’s parent company Comcast’s third-quarter 2019 earnings.
Instead, they’re “doing a lot of [ad-supported] activity,” he continued, which should “cut the investment pretty substantially.”
“I think we’re gonna get to cruising altitude much more quickly than a subscription service,” Burke added.
Plus, Comcast already has a massive group of subscribers — 55 million video customers, to be specific — under its umbrella.
Comcast and NBCUniversal will continue to sell content to other companies, Burke said. And the library available for Peacock is no slouch itself.
The Peacock product is “beautiful and very different,” Burke added.
Peacock will be free to all Comcast video and/or broadband subscribers. In other words, you won’t necessarily need a cable TV subscription to stream Peacock content — but if you have one, you’re covered too.
Read all about Comcast’s Q3 earnings here. Company stock (CMCSA) opened the trading day this morning up a few percentage points.
(Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story attributed the quotes to Comcast CEO Brian L. Roberts and not Burke. TheWrap regrets the error.)