As it continues to cozy up to China with a new multi-billion dollar theme park and the upcoming Beijing Olympics, NBCUniversal is losing important ground at home among American consumers as its streaming service Peacock has so far failed to generate much interest among TV viewers.
Peacock drew a paltry 1.6 percent of digital original demand share in the U.S. during the third quarter, according to a study by Parrot Analytics that was published by Variety. Netflix dominated with 43.7 percent while HBO Max, Apple TV Plus, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and Disney Plus ranged from 6.1 percent to 8.9 percent.
Paramount+ also fared poorly, with 3.9 percent market share for the quarter.
NBCUniversal — which owns the left-wing news outlets MSNBC and NBC News — was late to the game in launching Peacock last year and has thus far failed to spark much in the way of subscriber interest despite being the exclusive streaming destination for the hit series Yellowstone.
Peacock’s original programming has also failed to generate much buzz. New titles including Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol — a prequel to The Da Vinci Code — and the podcast adaptation Dr. Death have left little to no impression on the cultural conversation.
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“Peacock is simply not on a trajectory to be one of the major streaming services,” analyst Craig Moffett, co-founder of Moffett-Nathanson, told Variety. “They’re going to have to do something dramatic if they’re going to change that narrative.”
Meanwhile, NBCUniversal continues to cultivate a close relationship with China’s Communist dictators.
The Comcast-owned media giant recently opened its Universal Studios theme park in Beijing. The ultimate price tag for the park — which has been promoted as Universal’s largest theme park worldwide — remains unknown. But various reports have pegged the cost at around $8 billion.
NBC is also set to broadcast the Beijing Games this winter amid controversy that the event will glorify a regime that is committing human rights atrocities on minority ethnic and religious groups.
The network’s news division was at the center of the Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer sex scandals. NBC News was accused of burying Ronan Farrow’s expose into Weinstein’s acts of sexual assault and harassment due at least in part to pressure from Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
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