Peacock and Paramount+ hold on for dear life

The Future. With a correction in the streaming industry making competition stiffer than ever, smaller industry players like Peacock and Paramount+ are downsizing and tweaking their pricing models to cut a profit. The initiatives might work, but their necessity suggests that these players might not be in the game much longer.

Ch-ch-changes
Both Paramount+ and Peacock’s parent companies outlined the many tweaks they’d make based on their 2022 performance.

• While Paramount+ and Peacock added 23.1 million and 11 million subscribers last year, both also posted major direct-to-consumer losses of $1.8 billion and $2.5 billion, respectively.

• Paramount’s planned measures include downsizing Showtime to save an expected $700 million annually and introducing a multi-tiered pricing model to boost average revenue.

• Meanwhile, NBCU (Peacock’s parent company) has forbidden sign-ups for Peacock’s free tier with the intent of growing subscriptions to its paid tier.

Dope or desperate?
It’s hard to see how Peacock could expect their subscriber growth to remain strong. Q4’s signup numbers benefited from the World Cup and the past NFL season — two events that the streamer can’t artificially repeat in the coming quarters. And it doesn’t help that Peacock and Paramount+ have some of the highest churn rates in streaming.

Still, both platforms have enough original content that they may become attractive acquisition targets for bigger players like Netflix or Hulu. If they want something to brag about, why not a buyout?