Except that this isn’t entirely the case. CBS has put two new Star Trek shows (Discovery and Picard) exclusively on CBS All Access, and Disney released the Star Wars series The Mandalorian exclusively on Disney+ (and have just done the same with the video release of Hamilton). In both cases, they’ve used the interest behind those shows to drive people to subscribe.
But apparently it was Netflix’s bread and butter. Most people streamed The Office and Friends than any of their originals (which is why they spent so much to keep Friends for an additional year).
I’m enjoying watching Parks & Recreation on Netflix (never watched it when it was on originally), and if it was taken off for Peacock, I’d follow it there. Though I may watch an ep on Peacock to see if the streaming quality is any better (but I’m not sure what streaming bitrate Peacock streams at), etc.
Yes and no. Peacock came out today with Psych 2 (a film), and will have their Brave New World series exclusively on Peacock.
Though will also have legacy NBC shows (including USA, Bravo, etc shows like Monk and Psych).
I still think there is a calculation made, and the biggest stuff still goes on the widest platforms.
Hamilton was a special case; Disney knew that its new content was running dry, especially with the COVID shutdown, and so they opted to premiere it on the streaming service now instead of in theaters next year. And it cost them $75 million; I can’t imagine there are enough people like me who subscribed to Disney+ for the first time to justify that purely on a dollars-and-cents basis.
At least for the Star Wars and Marvel franchises, for Disney, pretty much anything that’s not an actual, theatrical film is now going onto Disney+. (And, I think that those qualify as some of Disney’s “biggest stuff.”)
For Star Wars, in addition to The Mandalorian, they created a final season of the Clone Wars animated series for Disney+ (which premiered a couple of months ago, and have a couple of other Star Wars series (both live-action and animated) in the pipeline, which are also bound for Disney+.
For Marvel, they have a bunch of TV series in production or pre-production, nearly all of which will be going to Disney+, as well.
I would also suggest that Star Trek Discovery and Picard would have brought in significant ratings on CBS’s network. It was used to sell CBS All Access, but I’d argue it would have been one of CBS’s biggest shows.
If Star Trek Discovery and Picard aired on CBS, they would have likely gotten good ratings, But would they bring in enough ad revenue vs subscription revenue of CBS All Access? I have no idea. Though they are also counting on laziness, and figured some folks may sign up for CBS All Access (mostly for Trek) and then “forget” to cancel.
Brian
I’m pretty sure that CBS made that calculation - subscribers to All Access would be worth losing the ad revenue. So All Access isn’t just old stuff and second hand stuff, but things worthy of subbing for if you want newer things. Add to that The Good Fight, which I think would have done pretty well on network as well.
A Peacock subscription is included with my Comcast/Xfinity service so I took a look. Right now it rates a big, fat “meh”.
If you look up, you’ll see you and I are in the exact same position. My review was a little longer, but, “meh” was the keyword.
Although, I did not know there was a new Psych movie over there; I’ll have to check that out.
That’s not entirely the fault of NBC/Peacock. Platforms like Roku and Amazon Fire are trying to grab ever-larger chunks of money for hosting services like this. It’s a bit like the old negotiations between content providers and cable companies, which sometimes saw whole channels become unavailable while the two tried to work out a deal.
Same thing is happening now, with Roku and Amazon trying to squeeze every possible dollar out of NBC for hosting Peacock, and NBC trying to get onto these platforms without giving up too much of its revenue.
I hadn’t heard about the Psych movie either; thanks for mentioning it.
Is the new Psych movie available through the free option?
I dont think so.
I hope it crashes and burns and costs them a fortune and the executives who put it together lose their fortunes and have to eat out of garbage cans in back alleys. That won’t happen but I can always dream. I’m not actually thinking maliciously, I merely want the practical effect of serving as a warning to others so this irritating complicated tiering model and botched branding they’re so fond of from the anachronistic cable TV model stops infecting the streaming service landscape.
Three tiers, with the top two both “unlocking” different content? Great, lets add another dimension to the game of “where does the show I want to watch live, and where can I watch it without ads?”. Their website is so out of the cable / telecom monopoly playbook, with the actual cost (i.e. sitting though ads) buried in the Q&A and asterisks all over the place (their ad-free “premium plus” isn’t ad-free, it’s some things that are ad-free; “available on date” on movies they’re advertising).
Watching ads does not count as free in my book, and the streaming service model thankfully seems to have largely moved on. I really don’t want to be in the middle of a movie or show where the creators have carefully crafted a tone, mood, etc. only to be punched in the face in the middle with a garish and loud burrito commercial. Television has moved on. These guys are trying to sell you a 1981 Cadillac Cimarron and it’s 2020. I just want it to go away.
Anyway, if you stick around, I’ll tell you how I really feel 
Yes indeed.
Two things
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to all the people who complained about cable and having channels they didn’t want and wanting to buy everything piecemeal - this is so much worse.
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this is a really weird rollout. I have several devices connected to my (dumb) tv and none of them work with this service. The only way I think I can watch is on my phone and I don’t really like watching tv on my phone - not when I have an actual television. I also can’t tell if I have a premium tier or not (I have xfinity, but who knows.) There are a few shows that I want to watch that I’m pretty sure would be on the service - but I can’t get there. That’s not good.
Yes, I watched it through a free option. I liked it better than the first movie.
Spent half a day figuring out hacks to get Pee-cock to stream to my TV. Finally got a stuttering version to (barely) work. Then the audio was out of sync… this is a huge network, this is the 21st century… sigh…
Gave up, went to Disney+, signed up and was watching flawless 4k Star Wars in five minutes.
I’ve got a chrome computer (think mac-mini) hooked up to my tv. Peacock doesn’t work through an HDMI cable, and the app shows just a black screen. No Roku app either. The only way I got it to work, poorly, was to cast it from my windows machine in the other room.