Decoder with Nilay Patel
NBCU's streaming chief isn't worried about you canceling cable
Mon, 30 Sep 2024
Matt Strauss is the Chairman of Direct-to-Consumer at NBC Universal. That’s a big fancy title that means he’s not only in charge of Peacock but also every other streaming video offering the company has worldwide. So you can bet Matt and I got into what that structure even looks like, and how it all operates under the overall ownership of Comcast, which is in the middle of its own massive transition as its traditional cable TV business continues to fade. There’s a lot in this one – tech, media, sports, and culture, all at once. It’s quite a ride. Links: Comcast's new DVR ditches the hard drive, stores your recordings in the cloud (The Verge, 2013) Comcast and Charter Lost Another 269,000 Broadband Customers Last Quarter (The Motley Fool) It's official, people aren't watching TV as much as they used to (The Verge) The future of TV is up in the air (The Verge) Peacock Quarterly Loss Narrows to $348M as Subscribers Drop to 33M (THR) OTA and free online video drives higher US TV-video viewing hours (S&P Global) Streaming was part of the future — now it’s the only future (The Verge) US pay-TV losses reach a nadir (Light Reading) The 2024 Olympics were a big win for TV of all kinds (The Verge) Court blocks Disney-Fox-WBD sports streaming bundle (The Verge) An AI version of Al Michaels will deliver Olympic recaps on Peacock (The Verge) Transcript: Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today I'm talking with Matt Strauss, who is chairman of Direct-to-Consumer at NBCUniversal. That's a fancy title. It means he's in charge of Peacock and all of NBCUniversal's other consumer products.
That includes everything from Fandango and its Fandango at Home video service, which used to be Vudu, to Rotten Tomatoes, to the core platforms that powers the Now TV service run by Sky in Europe. That's a lot, and all of that is under the overall ownership of Comcast, which is in the middle of its own massive transition as the traditional cable TV business fades away.
Matt actually spent almost two decades at Comcast proper, working on its cable products before switching over to NBCU. And I was really interested in his view on how the economics of the TV business will shake out as almost everyone moves over to streaming. Matt also oversees what's called the Global Streaming Platform, which Peacock and other services at Comcast run on.
And I wanted to know if that big tech investment is generating the kind of economies of scale that really pay off over time. Stuff that tech companies think about all the time, but which media companies have had to learn. And one thing that I really wanted to talk to Matt about was how Peacock handled the Olympics this year.
It really felt like things clicked for that platform and Peacock in Paris over the summer. And the idea that all of the coverage from the Olympics could be served up in multiple different formats on demand and live really came together. It turns out that a lot of these ideas have been brewing inside of NBC for a long time, for a decade or more in some cases.
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