NBCUniversal’s Peacock lost a mind-boggling $2.7 billion in 2023 as the left-wing legacy studio continues to burn through cash at an alarming rate in the Hollywood streaming arms race.
Peacock’s subscriber base currently stands at around 30 million — still far behind Netflix, which counts around 80 million domestic subscribers.
The 2023 losses are worse than the previous year when Peacock lost $2.5 billion.
Peacock has failed to generate much popular enthusiasm with its original programming, instead relying in large part on the hit series Yellowstone, which it leases from Paramount.
The streamer has been aggressively promoting Seth MacFarlane’s Ted, a new comedy series based on the popular R-rated movies about a highly sexed stuffed bear.
While the show debuted as Peacock’s most-viewed series, MacFarlane recently told The Hollywood Reporter that the series is “outrageously expensive.”
Peacock serves as the streaming home to some of the far-left MSNBC’s programming, including The Reid Out, hosted by Joy Reid.
The streamer also produced The Mehdi Hasan Show, before the ratings-challenged host Medhi Hasan was dropped.
On Thursday, Comcast-owned NBCUniversal announced that Peacock’s losses for for the final quarter of 2023 totaled $825 million, with the service adding just 2 million subscribers from the previous three months.
Other legacy Hollywood studios are also losing their shirts as they attempt to compete with Netflix for streaming dollars.
The Walt Disney Company is pouring billions of dollars a year into its Disney+ streaming service, which is still far from profitable. The company’s streaming losses are alarming investors and have helped prompt an internal boardroom war over the future of the company.
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