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Peacock is set to shut down its operations in the UK on 9 January 2024 mainly due to being unable to establish itself alongside other OTT Titans.
As informed officially by Sky, Peacock is ceasing its operations in the UK soon, and it’s all because of lower market value, launch strategy, and competition.
Peacock, an OTT platform popular in the USA, was established by NBCUniversal. Initially Launched in the UK in 2021, the platform was available to the viewers via Comcast’s Sky Glass, Sky Q, Sky+, and NOW. While Peacock offers a wide variety of content like NBC’s Superstore, Suits, and The Real Housewives of New York City, there’s a sizable content library for viewers via Sky.
The decision to shut down Peacock was made after carefully considering other factors along with finding a new home for the content library. While Peacock will no longer be available to viewers using Sky, they will be able to stream some of the shows and movies on the Hayu app, also owned by NBCUniversal.
The main problem that led to Peacock being terminated from the UK is Peacock’s integration with Sky, which limits the viewers and subscribers to view Peacock shows after subscribing to Sky or NOW. Even with a membership, the existing subscribers could only access the Peacock content library with ads – that is if they don’t have a NOW Boost subscription.
Another thing that added to the termination is the infrequent refreshing of the content library, as well as the size of the entire library, which was very little. In the USA, Peacock is thriving with an entire library (which is quite a large one), but in the UK, there was barely enough content to watch without it being updated.
Peacock not being available as a separate or independent app was also another issue that led to this. For this reason, many Peacock originals premiered on other Sky channels, which caused low ratings as many people didn’t want to pay extra for Sky. This is why the platform on Sky TV devices will no longer be available and it will be deactivated.
The scheduled content of Peacock on NOW will be removed while other content may be shifted to Hayu. Although there has not been a word from Peacock on this matter, this move arouses questions and confusion regarding other streaming services entering international markets and ensuring integration stability.
Digital content consumption in the UK is not lower than in many other countries, yet Peacock faced a tragic end, which raised a lot of concern from viewers. What are your takes on this news?
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