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Kabletown at a Krossroads

Comcast’s Brian Roberts has a decision to make with Peacock, a subscale, money-losing, U.S.-only streamer whose growth has been tied mostly to exclusive sports programming. As Netflix and the other global platforms pull away, new numbers add urgency to the push to merge or bundle.

Brian Roberts
The only content that meaningfully perks the feathers at Peacock is live sports, and, more specifically, NBC Sports programming that is only on Peacock. Photo: Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Matthew Belloni
January 31, 2025

These days, only the global streaming services can convince hundreds of entertainment journalists to schlep to deep Hollywood during the morning rush hour and stare, mouths wide open, at a gushing fire hydrant of content. Among the Netflix programming that drenched me in the back row of the Egyptian Theater on Wednesday, there were lots of engagement tools—sorry, premium scripted and unscripted series—that looked decent, featured big stars, and that I instantly forgot once the next celebrity appeared to introduce their own mechanism of engagement.