NBC to give cost, details on Peacock streaming

NEW YORK — NBCUniversal was expected Thursday to unveil the price and other details of its upcoming streaming service, Peacock.

The service launches in April and will be free for customers of Comcast, NBCUniversal’s parent company, though the company could announce additional cable partners whose customers would also get Peacock free. For everyone else, there’s speculation the service will cost $5 to $10 a month, depending on whether the viewer wants to ditch ads. That’s in line with what many rivals cost.

There is an influx of new streaming services from the country’s biggest tech and entertainment companies as people increasingly turn away from watching live network TV and cut their cable subscriptions. These new offerings model themselves on Netflix: a catalog of movies and TV shows available whenever and wherever people want to watch, for a monthly fee. They’ll have to fight for consumers’ attention and money.

Like Hulu, in which Comcast is a silent minority owner, Peacock likely will have different prices with and without ads. Quibi, a mobile-focused short-video streaming service backed by Hollywood studios, will also have both options when it launches in April.

By contrast, Apple TV Plus, Disney Plus and the upcoming HBO Max from AT&T’s Warner Media don’t have ads at all, though AT&T has talked about having some in the future.

All the costs for streaming services add up, and surveys suggest people don’t want to subscribe to all of them, especially with many existing streaming options already, including Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu. Prices range from $5 a month (Apple TV Plus, Quibi with ads) to $15 (HBO Max). Netflix’s most popular plan costs $13.

Peacock will have 15,000 hours of programming, including original content and stuff from the NBC library like “The Office,” which leaves Netflix for Peacock in 2021. Not all of Peacock’s content will be exclusive. Original shows will include a series based on a true-crime podcast that stars Alec Baldwin and Christian Slater. Peacock also plans to remake sci-fi favorite “Battlestar Galactica.” And Michael Schur, creator of “Parks and Recreation” and “The Good Place,” is producing a comedy called “Rutherford Falls.”

Media analyst Rich Greenfield said he considers Peacock a “digital version of a broadcast network,” with a better consumer experience than traditional TV.

CBS All Access, launched in 2014, functions in some ways as a digital version of CBS and remains a relatively small streamer.