Peacock’s Battle for Survival and the Catch 22 of Streaming

Summary

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Episode Overview

Podcast: The Town with Matthew Belloni
Episode: Peacock’s Battle for Survival and the Catch 22 of Streaming
Date: April 27, 2026
Guests: Lucas Shaw (Bloomberg)

In this episode, host Matthew Belloni dives deep into the existential challenges facing Peacock, NBCUniversal’s much-discussed streaming service. With recurring guest Lucas Shaw, the conversation covers Peacock’s mounting financial losses, inconsistent identity, high subscriber churn, and massive investments in sports and original content. They analyze whether these strategies are sustainable, why Comcast hasn’t settled on a clear vision for Peacock, and how leadership issues and industry trends shape the platform’s future.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Peacock’s February "High" and Financial Reality

• Opening Stats:

  • Peacock lost $432 million this quarter—nearly double the loss from the previous year.
  • The service’s total losses now exceed $11 billion since its 2020 launch.

    “That’s more than $11 billion at the Comcast NBCUniversal streaming service has lost since it launched in 2020.” — Matthew Belloni [00:54]

• Subscribers vs. Profitability:

  • Despite reaching 44 million US subscribers and topping 3% of all US connected TV viewership in February, profitability remains elusive.
  • Strong audience spikes often coincide with expensive sporting events and are followed by high subscriber churn (9% monthly, compared to Netflix’s 2%).

• Quote:

  "Peacock has to spend to replace nearly a tenth of its entire subscriber base every month. Not great." — Matthew Belloni [02:05]

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The Sports Strategy – Necessary but Expensive

• Major Investments:

  • New NBA deal: $2.5 billion/year; NFL rights for Sunday Night Football expected to rise.
  • February’s spike attributed to the Winter Olympics, Super Bowl, and NBA All-Star Game.

• Sports as a Differentiator:

  • Peacock has the “second best selection of sports” among streaming services after Disney’s ESPN.
  • However, true exclusivity is limited, which leads to subscriber in-and-out behavior ("churn").

• Costs vs. Returns:

  • “Are we getting to the point where the strategy of more sports... is coming back to haunt these companies that cannot then get to profitability in their streaming service?” — Matthew Belloni [22:49]

  • Lucas Shaw contends investing in sports is still necessary for competitive relevance:

    “You can’t be a serious competitor in the streaming wars these days without sports.” — Matthew Belloni [23:21]

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The Content Play – Building for the Long-Term

• Investments in Creative Talent:

  • Recent deals with Taylor Sheridan, Jez Butterworth, Chris McCarthy, David Glasser—many ex-Paramount+ heavyweights.
  • These bets will take years to bear fruit.

• Strategic Shift:

  • Donna Langley (overseeing film and TV) aggressively pursuing top creators, while studio programming output remains variable.
  • Tension between investing in sports and entertainment as both divisions compete for finite resources.

• Quote:

  “Is Peacock writing checks that its subscribers can’t cash?” — Matthew Belloni [10:55]

  • “Their biggest hit is Traitors. And Love Island.” — Matthew Belloni [25:48]

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The Churn Problem and Identity Crisis

• Subscriber Churn:

  • Peacock’s monthly churn is 9%, nearly double industry average (5%) and four times Netflix (2%).
  • This churn is exacerbated by bundling efforts and reliance on sports/event-driven signups.

• Brand Identity Woes:

  • Six years in, Peacock still lacks a clear brand identity.
  • Lucas Shaw after months of conversations with insiders:

    “We still haven’t really figured out what Peacock is or supposed to be.” — Lucas Shaw [16:50]

  • Challenge: balancing unscripted programming (Bravo, wealthy female demo) with sports (male/family, event-driven).

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Corporate and Leadership Dynamics

• NBCUniversal’s Awkward Structure:

  • Mike Cavanagh (Comcast) in charge, no new CEO for NBCUniversal post-Jeff Shell.
  • Donna Langley and Matt Strauss operate as de facto autonomous heads on West and East Coasts.

• Optionality and Possible Futures:

  • Belloni speculates on potential JV, partnerships, or mergers (e.g., with Amazon, Paramount+, or HBO).
  • No concrete direction, leaving intentions ambiguous for investors and staff:

    “The lack of leadership at that company says something about their intentions with it. I just don’t know what that is.” — Matthew Belloni [18:40]

• Comcast’s Broader Business Pressures:

  • Stock down 11% in a year, 40% over five years; main issue is the declining “connectivity” business (cable/internet), not NBCUniversal per se.
  • “If this weren’t a controlled company, Brian Roberts would probably be out at this point, right?” — Matthew Belloni [20:12]

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Future Bets and Industry Landscape

• Long-Term Vision:

  • Lucas Shaw: “They’re building from scratch… And I think they’ve been torn between different impulses.” [15:21]
  • Paramount+ as a model: focusing on targeted audiences, e.g., Taylor Sheridan model to serve the NFL demo in the off-season.

• Bundling as a Solution:

  • Unlike Disney (who improved churn via bundle with HBO Max), Peacock is thus far alone.
  • “If there was a really good like Netflix Peacock bundle or a Disney Peacock bundle, suddenly the churn goes down. They have sports, they’re complementary.” — Lucas Shaw [24:18]
  • But as Belloni notes, “Why would Netflix do that?” [25:07]

• Moving the Creative Needle:

  • Donna Langley’s tenure—after nearly two years—with new creators coming on board, but real results (e.g., Taylor Sheridan shows) are years out.
  • “The mandate is going to be to recreate the Paramount plus environment. It just makes too much sense.” — Matthew Belloni [26:17]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Peacock is in this no man’s land… perpetually clawing to get into the big time.” — Matthew Belloni [07:38]
• “They’re putting the team back together. But the question is, is Peacock writing checks that its subscribers can’t cash?” — Matthew Belloni [10:55]
• “You are six plus years into this project and you’re not sure what it is.” — Matthew Belloni [17:09]
• “All this stuff moves slowly, but they brought over Chris McCarthy, who was the architect of the Yellowstone franchise-ification.” — Matthew Belloni [11:58]
• “I don’t think there is [a brand identity].” — Lucas Shaw [16:50]
• “Do we start talking about where are more hits on Peacock from Donna and her people?” — Matthew Belloni [25:48]
• “Chris McCarthy... is consistently showing the ability to manage up, and he’s going to start taking stuff over.” — Matthew Belloni [26:32]

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Important Timestamps

• Peacock’s $432M Loss; Sports and Churn Summary: [00:54–03:00]
• Box Office Brief & Michael Jackson Movie: [05:13–07:06]
• Peacock’s Brand & Content Investment Analysis: [07:11–13:18]
• Debate on Sports Strategy and Churn Data: [22:49–25:48]
• Leadership Vacuum and Strategic Standstill: [18:00–21:39]
• Future of Bundling and Content Pipeline: [24:05–26:32]

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Tone and Style

Belloni and Shaw maintain their trademark blend of candid industry analysis and wry humor, poking holes in PR spins and acknowledging when even insiders are left in the dark about the streamer’s fate. Their skepticism about Peacock’s future is clear, but they also credit Donna Langley’s proactive hiring of A-list creators and the necessity of investing in sports.

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Conclusion

This episode offers a sharp, comprehensive look at the paradoxes and challenges faced by Peacock. Despite powerful parent backing, a growing subscriber base, and expensive content bets, the streamer remains stuck between ambitions and realities, caught in both the structural shifts of streaming and internal uncertainty. The central question—can massive sports and content investments ever pay off for a platform with a shaky brand and high churn?—remains open, but listeners get a nuanced, insider’s take on why Peacock’s story matters for Hollywood’s future.

Transcript

[A]

This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Presenting Beef from creator, writer and director Lee Seung Jin. The latest installment of the eight time Emmy winning anthology series features an all new cast with an all new beef starring Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Charles Melton, Kalee Spaeny and legendary Korean actors Yoon Yu Jung and Song Kang Ho. Esquire raves it's hands down the best TV show of the year and USA Today hails it an exquisite masterpiece Beef for your Emmy Awards consideration, This episode of the Town is presented to you by AMC Networks. Billy Magnuson and Zach Galifianakis star in the new series the Audacity on AMC and amc. Plus Influence rises, people unravel and CEO meltdowns are business as usual among Silicon Valley elite. Executive produced by Jonathan Glatzer, a writer producer of Succession and Better Call Saul watch new episodes of the Audacity Sundays exclusively on AMC and AMC. Plus it is Monday, April 27 another quarter, another big loss for Peacock. $432 million, about twice the losses last year in this same period. That's more than $11 billion at the Comcast. NBCUniversal stream streaming service has lost since it launched in 2020. The Comcast said it is, quote, expected to approach profitability this quarter. Not sure what that means quite exactly. This situation might surprise people in town because it does feel like Peacock finally has been getting there in subscribers. It's at 44 million in US alone. Remember, this is a US only service and it has shows that people kind of are watching and talking about. The Traders made the top 10 in Nielsen for the first quarter of the year. Love island is huge, and All Her Fault was a big hit in the fall, and the Universal movie studio, which has been pumping out hits like Wicked and Super Mario. Those all debut first on Peacock in the US Though they then cycle through to Netflix and Amazon pretty quickly. And most importantly, the sports Peacock accounted for 3% of all U.S. viewing on connected TVs in February, thanks to the trifecta of the Winter Olympics, the Super bowl and the NBA All Star Game. They all aired on Peacock and NBC. That was a big spike. But the sports have come with a big cost as well. The new NBA deal alone cost $2.5 billion per year for games on NBC and Peacock. And the NFL is about to ask for more money for Sunday Night Football. And even when people subscribe to Peacock to watch this stuff, they tend to cancel at a rate higher than other services. According to antenna data reported by Bloomberg this weekend, 9% of Peacock subscribers churned out each month this year. That means that Peacock has to spend to replace nearly a tenth of its entire subscriber base every month. Not great. So what's going on here? Are we any closer to figuring out the future, if any, for Peacock? We've got Lucas Shaw on the show here to discuss our Monday guy. Today it's Peacock's legendary February, the aftermath, the huge losses, and the future from the ringer and puck. I'm Matt Bellany and this is the town. All right, we are here with Lucas Shaw from Bloomberg. Welcome back, Lucas.

[B]

When did you get back from. From D.C. i flew in last night.

[A]

Big weekend. Went to two MLB games with my dad and my kid and then experienced a little domestic terrorism at the White House correspondence dinner.

[B]

Wait, so your kid was in D.C.

[A]

he was watching on TV as the whole thing went down. A 10 year old with his dad in the room. And all of a sudden there's chaos and commotion and me under the table. Luckily I had reception. I was able to text back and say I'm okay, but not great.

[B]

How is, how scared was he when you got back to the hotel room, wherever you were staying?

[A]

He was okay. We explained it to him. It's funny how these things get reported. I mean, everyone's dunking on or laughing at that CAA agent Michael Glantz for eating his burrata salad during the entire thing. By the way, the bar salad was pretty damn good in the room. Like, we didn't really know what was going on. It was all just confusion. The Secret Service burst into the room. We didn't hear anything before. We couldn't hear the gunshots. So when they yelled down, everybody went under the table. And then all the cabinet members were whisked away. And then like, you know, Don Scavino was screaming, usa, usa. And nobody was chanting along with him. But after that it was just kind of confusion. Everyone's like, what? What happened? What are we doing here? And it took about 15, 20 minutes before they came out and said, you know, everything's under control. At that point they said the dinner would go on. And we're like, no, it's not going on. But then somebody went on CNN and said the, the gunman was killed. And everyone's like, oh, it's definitely not going on now. But everybody was sort of calm about it, at least in my area. So. And then we see the coverage and then you kind of get freaked out by the media coverage of it all. I was like, oh yeah, that was kind of an effed up situation.

[B]

There well, we are. We are glad you are here in one piece.

[A]

Speaking of stuff that happened this weekend, how. Why did you not see Michael? Your. Your duty to this country to see the Michael Jackson movie opening weekend, Is it.

[B]

Why is that my duty?

[A]

I don't know. Because I. I would have thought you would be curious.

[B]

You know, what a lot of the. The. The music biopics are for me. Karaoke, they're playing movies.

[A]

Yeah, I could see that. But I don't know, man. 97 million. 97 million domestic, 217 worldwide. Big movie.

[B]

Yeah. There are artists. Or if the movie's good enough, where I will immediately go to see it. And look, Michael Jackson is such a huge figure. I think all the coverage of it has probably colored my opinion a little bit because I, Antoine Fuqua, I actually tend to like his movies, but this

[A]

was a salvage job. I mean, I don't think any of the people involved in this movie will put this out as their best foot forward because they were put in such an awful position on having to not make the movie they wanted to make and make another movie on the fly.

[B]

My friends who saw it over the weekend, or at least I played tennis with a friend yesterday, and he's like, I had a lot of fun. I watched it. I enjoyed it. It was a good time.

[A]

Yeah. The average person doesn't care about any of this stuff. All the new accusers that came forward, they. They don't care. I will say sad in some ways, but. But yeah, they don't care.

[B]

It's only. It's only the end of April, but.

[A]

But.

[B]

But you're. You're in a good spot right now for the box office draft.

[A]

I was not going to bring it up, but now you and I have had one movie.

[B]

Mario, a little soft. Michael, a little. A little big.

[A]

You know, I know Mario is going to be fine.

[B]

Mario's fine. But it's going to be. It's going to limp past a billion. It's not going to be like a, you know, it's not going to get close to the. To the first one.

[A]

Yeah. Now is when it gets really serious because you've got Devil Wears Prada and you also have Mandalorian, and I have

[B]

the two big movies of May, and how those do. Will have a lot to say about the, you know, my faith this year.

[A]

All right, enough about that. Our favorite topic, Peacock. We've got to talk about Peacock.

[B]

Where do you think Peacock ranks? Like, if you had to rank how much we talk about different streaming services on this show. Like I imagine Netflix is number one because it's the biggest and blah, blah, blah, the biggest.

[A]

And you are, as I've noted many times, you are Netflix's favorite reporter.

[B]

You do me no favors with that. But I feel like, I feel like Peacock is number two probably, maybe. Why do you think that is? Like, why don't we talk? We. How much do we ever talk about Disney plus?

[A]

Not much, but. But we should talk about it more. But we, we talk about Peacock because it's in this no man's land. It is domestic only. It is perpetually like clawing to get into the big time. And we all thought that maybe this was the year they would get to profitability. They have a trifecta of sports last month that really everybody thought was going to be a huge boost. It was a huge boost in audience. They got to 3% of all viewing, which is good. Then the earnings come out last week and Comcast lost another $432 million on this service. And they saying that they expect to be close to profitability. But what does that even mean?

[B]

They are approaching profitability? Which is a very fancy way of saying we are still losing money. You know, it's tricky because they do now have the second best selection of sports of any streaming service, right? Espn, Disney's always going to have the most just because of what they do. But football, basketball, Olympics, some of the, you know, some of the other sports that they have between golf, tennis, et cetera.

[A]

But how much is exclusive? Not much.

[B]

Well, also how much really moves the needle? Football moves the needle. Basketball. I think Jerry's still out, right? I will say, you know, I, I'm a big basketball fan, so I am watching during the playoffs. But I, I also have YouTube TV and so I default to watching there instead of on Peacock.

[A]

I know, I think a lot of people do. I think that, that that's the issue is that it's not enough exclusive on Peacock and it's not consistent enough year round exclusivity. So you can come in and out. I mean you reported this past week in your newsletter that their churn rate is about 9%.

[B]

Yeah, that's the thing that alarmed me. Like it started, I noticed it start to tick up end of last year and when I reached out to some folks, they're like, oh, that's like the normal cyclical blah, blah, blah, blah. But it has been on a steady upward march and for the first three months this year I think it was 9% every month which is way like industry Average is like 5. Netflix is down at 2. So that means they're bringing people in and then a large percentage of people are going right out the door.

[A]

And what's interesting to me about the service is that it's not like Comcast has sort of written this off and is letting it atrophy or kind of stay the status quo. They're investing all of these sports rights that they, you know, they went out to the NBA. A portion of that is attributed to Peacock and their spend. They went after Taylor Sheridan. And although that deal won't kick in for almost three years, they now are bulking up with writers and directors around Taylor Sheridan. They just hired Jez Butterworth, which is. Who had Mobland on Paramount plus and a bunch of other things.

[B]

Yes. They're basically taking the Paramount plus scripted department and moving it over to.

[A]

Right. Which is smart because they've had a change of ownership there and David Ellison and Cindy Holland have not treated them, or in their minds of the people over there have not treated them well. So they are going after them. They hired Chris McCarthy who is at Paramount. They got David Glasser who produces Yellowstone.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I mean, it's like they're. They're putting the team back together. But the question is, is Peacock writing checks that its subscribers can't cash?

[B]

The deals that they're doing with Jez Butterworth, Taylor Sheridan, like, long term, it makes sense because the whole Paramount plus strategy, or a big part of it was, we have the NFL. What do we. What are we going to have to excite people who like the NFL in between games or when the season is not on? And Taylor Sheridan was really the answer to that. Right. That appeals to a lot of the same audience, makes these big, buzzy, expensive shows that he. Because he. And the people around him are a factory, they're just constantly churning him out. And so the churn goes down and the, and the growth is strong and the buzz around it is good. But that's, you know, you're waiting a couple years before you even get Taylor Sheridan there, and you're probably waiting another year or two before you get a show out of him. So the. I think the bigger question is like, what are they going to put on now to keep those people engaged?

[A]

That's the jazz Butterworth.

[B]

But even he has. He's going to get a show in two years, maybe.

[A]

Well, listen, all this stuff moves slowly, but they brought over Chris McCarthy who was the architect of the Yellowstone franchise. Ification. I have heard that he is already muscling around there and will likely have a bigger purview there soon. You know, they have an executive, Perlina, who runs the studio there and she's doing shows. But I have heard that it's, you know, the impression from creators is that if it's not one of these new people involved in the shows, it's very difficult to get a green light there. They just sat on a clueless reboot that they were going to do. They bought it in development last year with the OC producers on it, and it just sat there and finally they, they passed on it. But that's something that probably would have gone had they not brought in all these other people. And I think what Donna Langley is doing, Donna runs the content now for NBC Universal on film and tv. I think she's bulking up on this stuff because she knows if she doesn't do the entertainment content, all this money is going to go to sports. They're going to have to pay the NFL a bunch more. They've got, they already paid the, the NBA a bunch more and more. And it's sort of this battle between the entertainment content people and the sports people to get those budgets to do the programming. And Donna's acting fast.

[B]

Yeah, well, I will say the, the, the television studio actually makes a bunch of really good shows. Just some of them are not for Peacock. Right. They have hacks on hbo, which has been a big hit, and they do. I, I, I think most of the originals that, you know, people would consider successful, successful for Peacock have been made by Universal tv. There just haven't been quite enough of them.

[A]

Well, and they go on NBC.

[B]

I mean, some of them, I don't

[A]

think some of them do.

[B]

I don't think all her fault went on. No, no.

[A]

But you know, all those sitcoms like the Reba McIntyre sitcom and things like that that go on NBC first.

[B]

Look, Donna has now been in charge of, of sort of the TV studio and Peacock programming and all that for what, a year or two now?

[A]

It's almost two, I believe.

[B]

Yeah. And she's, she's clearly trying to kind of put in a strategy the, the movie studio. That's kind of the interesting thing about NBC Universal. More like, to me, the question of what they do about Peacock ends up tying into what do they want to do about their media business in general. Right. Like, what is Brian Roberts, the CEO, co CEO of Comcast Vision for the

[A]

company, but he's clearly allowing Donna Langley to go after these big creators. I've heard there's others that are lining up that are going to be doing deals with NBC Universal. So they're not abandoning Peacock. They are investing in Peacock.

[B]

Yeah, well, look, Donna is the, the most respected was because she's not just the movie studio chief anymore. Was the most respected movie studio chief in town. Has now taken on kind of a larger role, is clearly excellent with talent. And so they're. Yeah, they're. They're trying to make it work because the studios do. The studio business they have is doing well. The theme park business they have is doing well. And the cable networks that were failing, they have sort of spun off for the most part in this other entity versus.

[A]

But why can't they make Peacock work? Why is Peacock still losing money? Why can they not grow subscribers enough to. To counter that?

[B]

Well, it's losing money. You can't. It's losing money because they're investing so much in it. You can't knock them. You can't say like, you know, you have to give them credit for making the investment to try to make it work. It's just taken a long time. Look, they were late. They were basically the last media company to introduce a streaming service. Unless you're giving them credit for Hulu, because they were. NBC was one of the companies that started Hulu. They were the kind of initially, I'd say the most conservative. They've kept it us only they didn't invest in programming as quickly as their peers because partially because they're owned by Comcast and they didn't want to accelerate the decline of the bundle. And partially it's just maybe it's a conservative company and so it meant that everybody else got more and they were. It was like a brand new name. So at least with like hbo, you know, like what it is and it hard is subscriber base. So they're building from scratch. And I think they've been torn between different impulses. Right. All of the, the unscripted programming from NBC Universal, the Bravo and, and et cetera is mostly sort of like wealthy female viewers and then football and a lot of the sports tends to be more male, maybe not quite as wealthy. And so I, you know, I think they've had to figure out like, are we trying to reach everyone? And in, in which case we need a little bit of something for everyone or are we just going to focus on some sort of lesser targeted audiences, which is really what Paramount plus did to grow its subscriber base now in terms of usage.

[A]

But do you think they've decided that. I don't know that there is a clear brand identity of Peacock at this point?

[B]

I don't think there is. One of the reasons I wrote what I wrote is because I'd spent two months talking to people up and down the chain at Comcast and NBC Universal who are basically like, yeah, we still haven't really figured out what Peacock is or supposed to be. And I was like, you're six or seven months or excuse me, years. You're six plus years into this project and you're not sure what it is.

[A]

I know. And $11 billion into it. I know. And, and I always hear that like talks are happening in Philadelphia and behind closed doors. There's lots going on and something's in the works. And you know, I, I have never gotten a straight answer about what the plan is. Is it a joint venture with Amazon or some other company to take it global? Is it partnering with one of the suitors that's still available? If, if there are any suitors available? Maybe we'll see a Paramount plus HBO Peacock combination at some point. But we haven't gotten that answer. And it gets back to the question, are they writing checks that their subscriber base can't cash?

[B]

Do you think it matters that they. There is not. I mean they would push back on this, but there is effectively not someone in charge of NBC Universal, you mean no CEO.

[A]

I know Mike Kavanaugh who was a Comcast guy put in charge of NBC Universal last year. He was made co CEO of, of Comcast and they never replaced the head of NBC Universal.

[B]

They say he's still in charge of NBC Universal because he was the president of Comcast before too. It just now he's got a more elevated title and so they've got this sort of two headed hydra of Donna in L. A and Matt Strauss on the East Coast.

[A]

And I know, and you know what? Jeff Shell's available.

[B]

You know he just go back. He had that job $60 million last year. I don't know that he needs to rush back into yet another job, nor would.

[A]

I don't think they want him back.

[B]

But no, no, no, I don't know.

[A]

I, I do think that the lack of leadership at that company says something about their intentions with it. I just don't know what that is. Whether they say that it's going fine and they're happy with the leadership they have there. Whether they are reluctant to anger either Donna Langley or Matt Strauss by putting one over the other. Whether they are looking to sell the entire thing and they don't want to have a leader of a unit that is going to be sold. Like, what does that mean about their intention?

[B]

It gives them a lot of optionality, I think. Usually you don't fill a role or you put in sort of a, you know, a temporary placeholder if you plan to make some larger change in the next few months, years, whatever. And we, look, we, they, they, you know, they, they did go after Warner Brothers discovery. They didn't, they couldn't offer as compelling a deal as, as Netflix or Paramount. They, they had those talks with Electronic Arts. They've clearly thought about other strategic options and for now decided that they can stay the course and invest in what they have.

[A]

The stock is down 11% in the past year. It's down 40% in five years.

[B]

We're talking about. Although most of that has nothing to do with NBC Universal because that's actually the issue for Comcast has been that their main business, their connectivity business has also disappointed investors and it's led to their stock going down. If their stock were back where it was, you know, five years ago, they could have made a more compelling offer for Warner Brothers.

[A]

Yeah, it just, well, if this weren't a controlled company, Brian Roberts would probably be out at this point, right?

[B]

Oh, I don't know about that. He's done, he's done such a good job for so long. He.

[A]

40% decline in five years if real shareholders.

[B]

Okay, but I guess my, my counter to that would be like, look, the Disney stock price and tell Disney's still flat. Well, Disney is flat over like the entirety of Iger's era. It's up.

[A]

But you mean from the 2021 high

[B]

for the last couple years, it's gotten crushed. Right. So I think if you looked at Comcast over the super long term, much as Bob Iger, yes, the end of his tenure wasn't great, but he wasn't going to get, in fact, he got asked to come back because he'd been so good for so long. I think similarly with Brian Roberts. He built this thing from a relatively small company into the giant that it is today. He's made a lot of smart decisions. Now, has he made all the right decisions over the last few years? Probably not right. Sky ended up not being a particularly good purchase and Peacock hasn't worked that well.

[A]

But I think that they're probably pretty happy with getting, what was it, $32 billion for their stake in Hulu.

[B]

Look, someone who's a, you know, longtime CEO, who's done a lot right for shareholders are going to give him the benefit of the doubt. So I think even if it were a normal company, he'd be sit just fine. They might accelerate the, they might accelerate the succession planning.

[A]

Well, maybe that's what's going on with Kavanaugh here. Co CEO Brian's never had one of those before.

[B]

Co CEO the Epidemic. We saw it at Netflix. We have it at Netflix.

[A]

Well, we saw it, you know, with Reid and then Reed was gone. This episode is brought to you by FX is the Lowdown from acclaimed Reservation Dogs creator Sterling Harjo. The series stars five time Academy Award nominee Ethan Hawke as Lee Raybon, a self described Tulsa Trutsorian whose fixation on the truth tends to create more problems than it solves. This gloriously off kilter NOIR is an AFI television program of the year and one of 2025's most critically acclaimed shows. The Lowdown is available for your Emmy consideration on Hulu and Disney for bundled subscribers.

[C]

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[A]

so the sports spending, do we think that they are happy with this NBA deal and with the MLB deal and with bulking up on all of these sports and the fact they're gonna have to pay more for Sunday Night Football pretty soon, or are we getting to the point where the strategy of more sports, more sports, more sports is coming back to haunt these companies that cannot then get to profitability in their streaming service.

[B]

I think they're happy. They're, they're waiting to see.

[A]

Yeah, my, my take on that is you can't be a serious competitor in the streaming wars these days without sports. And I think Netflix is coming around to that fact. I mean, they are, they are the one that may need it the least, but they also now also want it. And that's the advantage that Peacock has, is that NBC has relationships and they have the Olympics and all of these different sports relationships. That's the only way that they play in this game. So I think it's still smart for them to have bulked up and paid the extraordinary NBA price, even if it's causing them to extend the time horizon to profitability. I still think that's right.

[B]

They're going to argue that this churn is a shorter term trend. Part of it is that they've also started to sell their service via third parties and that's increased churn. And that the data service we're using is flawed because it, you know, it's

[A]

a, it's a, oh, yadda yadda, it's

[B]

essentially an S. Blah, blah, blah, blah blah. But yeah, if sports fans know long term, okay, over the next 10 years, this is where I go for football, this is where I go for basketball, this is where I go for Olympics. Maybe the churn settles back down in a couple of years where instead of it being 9%, it's 5%, which is more manageable because you're seeing other. The other. And bundling is also helping. Right? The Disney churn has gotten better over the last kind of year or two, I think because of the different bundles. In particular their one with HBO Max, which maybe will go away in the Warner Mount era. But if Peacock can find ways, you know, if there was a. Not that they would do it, but if there was a really good like Netflix Peacock bundle or a Disney Peacock bundle, suddenly the churn goes down. They have sports, they're complimentary. It's just.

[A]

Why would Netflix do that?

[B]

Because sports, if they wanted, if they wanted, if they, if they just said you want to watch the sports, you can do it via Peacock. And if they had a way for, if they sort of said you were going to watch it within the Netflix experience.

[A]

But Netflix is pretty fully penetrated in

[B]

the U.S. you know, I know they don't need, they, they don't need the help. Their churn is at 2%. It's the best.

[A]

And at what point does Donna Langley have to kind of own the performance of Peacock? If it's been about two years since she's been in charge of content, I believe the content has gotten better. A lot of it is the reality stuff that is coming from the Bravo and other relationships.

[B]

Their biggest hit is Traitors.

[A]

So yeah, and Love Island. And Love Island. So yeah. I, I just wonder at what point is, do we start talking about where are more hits on Peacock from Donna and her people?

[B]

I mean, I think you got to give them at least a couple years because it's been a couple years and the shows that they're putting together are just starting to come out. Right. It takes a while to develop and change the pipeline. Her biggest deal so far is the Taylor Sheridan deal, and that doesn't even start until 2028. Unless something happens.

[A]

I think she's going to start bringing in a lot of other creators and the mandate is going to be to recreate the Paramount plus environment. It just makes too much sense.

[B]

So really there's just going to be Chris McCarthy operating in the background.

[A]

I think that this guy is a very savvy operator. He is consistently shown himself the, the ability to manage up and he's going to start taking stuff over and it's going to be the, whatever, you know, Mobland universe or the, the, the Jez Butterbury show that becomes four shows. It'll be something like that. Yeah, we shall see. All right, Lucas, thank you.

[B]

Thanks, man.

[A]

We are back with the call sheet. Craig, have you ever been to the Radford studio lot in the Valley?

[D]

No, I haven't. Is it near the Warner Brothers lot?

[A]

Kind of. It's closer to Universal, but it's right off of Ventura. It's a nice facility. I used to go there all the time because Entertainment Tonight was there when CBS owned it and they would tape in the early morning and if I was going to be on Entertainment Tonight, I'd have to go there. It. I mean, tons of shows have filmed there. Everything from Seinfeld, I Believe I Love Lucy did a little bit there. Like big shows.

[D]

Who is Radford?

[A]

Oh, I don't know. Probably whoever owned the original land, I have no idea. But it was owned by CBS for many years and then it was taken over by private equity, Hackman Capital Partners. They paid almost $2 billion, 1.85 billion five years ago for this property. And then boom, the content recession happens. The private equity that had all bet on these studio facilities in LA got their shirts handed to them in part for people like Netflix. Companies like Netflix taking their productions elsewhere. Netflix driving the entire industry off a cliff. And then boom, they swoop in and they are now negotiating to acquire the lot for what the LA Times reported was either 3, 30 million, 330 million to 400 million.

[D]

Somewhere in that is a tremendous discount.

[A]

Oh my God. It's like the irony of the whole thing of Netflix enabling this exodus of production. Going to New Mexico, going to New Jersey, going overseas and then coming in to buy.

[D]

You watch. Netflix is going to save Hollywood.

[A]

Yeah, buy for pennies on the dollar. This production studio, it's kind of amazing. And my prediction today is I think that Netflix is going to move their official headquarters over to this lot. I mean, Ted Sarandos has wanted a studio lot for years. He wanted the Paramount lot and the Ellison's aren't going to sell him that,

[D]

because what do they have right now in L. A in terms of production studios? Do they have anything?

[A]

Well, they produce stuff all over in different places. But their headquarters, their headquarters is in, you know, you've been there, it's in this like office park in Hollywood.

[D]

But they don't have a lot anywhere that they shoot on. If they need to shoot something in L, A, do they have to rent that space out from somebody else?

[A]

They do, yes.

[D]

Because I know that they're doing a New Mexico thing. They have, they're building something in New Jersey, but they don't have a dedicated shooting space in Los Angeles.

[A]

Right. They do not. I mean, they may have facilities under long term leases and they may own places here and there, but they do not own a big lot here. And I think this is the chance for them to do that, to have a lot, to have their executives there. I don't know that Ted is going to love driving to the Valley every day. I don't know that. You know, I think they're going to probably keep a lot of the space in Hollywood because I actually, actually don't think they could move everyone over to the Radford lot. I think it's actually smaller than what they currently have in terms of office footprint. But it's got that shooting space and I think that they are going to take advantage of that and use it as their L A hub.

[D]

What is this signal to you? Why would they be doing this now if shooting in L A is so expensive?

[A]

They see that the tide is turning on production incentives. Listen, if you're looking at all of these mayoral candidates in L, A, they're all talking about increasing incentives and cutting red tape. All the governor candidates are falling over themselves to pitch Hollywood. I think part of that is donations. They want Hollywood money to donate to their campaigns. But I think also there's a, there's a feeling that after the fires and the strikes and everything and the content recession we always talk about, that Hollywood is hurting. They need to bring this business back. And it's finally become a political issue and they are announcing over and over. I saw the Governor Gavin Newsom at our puck event in D.C. this weekend and I asked him and he said he's going to try to get an above the line tax credit into the next budget, which is a huge deal if that happens, because that's been a big reason why a lot of these productions go to the UK and Atlanta. And maybe that tide is turning and maybe Netflix will be able to capitalize on that.

[D]

Did you tell Gavin Newsome to come on the town.

[A]

I did. I got a very polite, quizzical brush off.

[D]

So thank you, but no, thank you.

[A]

No, I did not get a no, thank you. I just got it, like, oh, you know, okay. You know, maybe, you know, that kind of thing.

[D]

Okay. He's been on other ringer shows.

[A]

He has no. I know. He's pretty available. He talks to my colleague Peter Hamby at Puck a lot. So not out of the question, but we'll see. All right. That's the show for the day. I want to thank my guest, Lucas Shaw, producer Craig Horbeck, Arter Jon Jones. And I want to thank you. We'll see you a couple more times this week.