New Peacock customers will no longer be able to sign up to access Peacock for free. The service since its inception has offered the ability to sign up for Peacock with ads and a reduced catalog of content. The free tier also included the ability to access the “Channels” section of the app where Comcast placed numerous 24-7 feeds of content from its library.
New customers have only two choices for signup. Either they can sign up for the $4.99 ad-supported tier or the $9.99 ad-free tier that also includes access to local NBC channels in market. Though at the moment users can sign up for Peacock for the entire year for $29.99.
For anyone looking to jump aboard the one-time fee for a year is definitely the way to go unless you think you can not get more than 5 months of use out of it. For WWE fans that means for $30.00 you will get every premium live event for 12 months. The $4.99 tier also includes live sports and the Hallmark Channel live feeds along with the rest of NBC’s current shows and a huge legacy library.
This move harkens back to the transition Hulu made when it had a free ad-supported version that could be accessed by a computer and “Hulu Plus” for mobile and streaming devices that charged a monthly fee. Hulu eventually dropped the free tier and the Hulu Plus moniker. It then made the whole service a premium paid service with a $14.99 ad-free tier and less costly ad-supported model. The unspoken secret is that ad-supported services make more money in the long run because they allow the providers to get revenue from two sources.
