Peacock En Español: NBC fights to stay in the streaming game
Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, and Hulu dominate the streaming service scene, and as more and more Americans choose to switch from cable to streaming, the battle for subscription numbers continues.
Peacock, NBC’s flagship streaming service, launched in April of 2020 and features movies and TV from Universal Studios, NBC, and CNBC. It currently has 15 million paid subscribers, and 30 million users monthly as of October 2022, after months of stagnant numbers. Comparatively, Disney+ has 164.2 million paid subscribers as of November 2022. Facing low subscriber rates in an increasingly competitive market space, NBC chose to take a unique course of action this past quarter to bolster its subscriber base.
Peacock recently launched a new initiative to attract more Hispanic audiences to its subscriber base. This campaign features advertisements in Spanish, popular American TV shows dubbed in Spanish, the Premier League soccer, and live Telemundo shows added to Peacock’s library. The goal is to create a niche space for Latino audiences often shunned by other streaming services and provide lots of content in Spanish.
Peacock’s initiative is not without merit. According to a study by Horowitz, over 80% of Latinos subscribe to at least one streaming service, and 64% of those subscribe to a Spanish-language service. The market for streaming is shifting, as Peacock predicted, as over 22% of Latino TV consumers switched from cable TV to streaming-only in the past three years.
NBC continues to fight for its place in the streaming game, and only time will tell if the Spanish initiative will help save Peacock.