Архив метки: NBC

Peacock kills its free tier option for new customers

Peacock is no longer offering its free tier to new customers, a spokesperson for NBCUniversal confirmed to TechCrunch on Tuesday. The company says it’s shifting its focus to its Premium offering and that doing so will allow the streaming service to remain competitive in the marketplace. The change was first reported by The Streamable.
The free tier is still available to users who are already on the plan, the spokesperson said in an email. In addition, users who cancel their paid subscriptions will automatically be downgraded to the free tier. Peacock has offered the free tier since its launch in 2020, giving users restricted access to the streaming service’s content catalogue. The tier included a limited amount of content when compared to the paid tiers.
New customers will now have to choose between Peacock’s Premium or Premium Plus tiers. The ad-supported Premium tier costs $4.99 per month and includes the full content library, live sports and NBC and Bravo shows after they air on TV. The Premium Plus tier costs $9.99 per month and offers an ad-free experience, offline viewing support and a livestream of your local NBC channel.
Peacock launched around the same time as Disney+, HBO Max and Apple TV+ but was the only one to offer a free tier. Now the company’s focus is shifting. The spokesperson told TechCrunch that Peacock is now focusing on its Premium offering, noting that the paid subscription is more reflective of its brand.
The move comes as Peacock recently reported its best quarterly result since its launch. The streaming service added 5 million paying subscribers in its fourth quarter of 2022, bringing the total to 20 million, up from the over 15 million subs in the previous quarter. The boost in paid subscribers was primarily due to the FIFA World Cup, which streamed in Spanish on Peacock Premium and Telemundo.

Peacock tops 20M subscribers in Q4 as losses widen

Peacock kills its free tier option for new customers by Aisha Malik originally published on TechCrunch
Peacock kills its free tier option for new customers

Peacock adds live TV from all local NBC stations to its Premium Plus tier

Peacock announced that on November 30, its Premium Plus subscribers will get 24/7 access to their local NBC station in all of NBC’s 210 markets, including live TV programming like local news, sports, weather and entertainment.
Subscribers will soon be able to livestream popular programs like “The TODAY Show,” “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and “Saturday Night Live” without paying for cable. As part of yesterday’s soft launch, some Premium Plus subscribers already gained access to their NBC local affiliate channel livestream.
“With Peacock’s local affiliate livestream, our subscribers are getting the unique combination of the ad-free on-demand content they love with the local news and NBC programming that is already part of their daily life,” Kelly Campbell, president, Peacock and Direct-to-Consumer, NBCUniversal, said in a statement.
NBC’s local affiliate stations join brands and channels like NFL, Golf, Premiere League, NBC News, Sky News, TODAY, Hallmark, WWE and others.
Peacock is likely including more live TV options to compete with rival Paramount+, which has always included local programming on its platform. Paramount+, with its 46 million subscribers, brings live TV to 99% of the United States, the company claims on its website.
After experiencing a slowdown in subscriber growth, it’s also possible that Peacock is urging more of its subscribers to upgrade to Premium Plus. Peacock recently revealed that its total paid subscriber base jumped from 13 million paid subscribers to over 15 million in the third quarter.
While it’s unlikely that many Peacock subscribers of its free ad-supported plan will switch over to the $9.99/month Premium Plus tier, its possible subscribers paying $4.99/month for the Premium plan will want to switch over to get 24/7 access to their local NBC station.
Plus, $9.99/month is a better deal than paying the hefty price for cable or live TV streaming services like Sling TV.
“This is an exciting new offering that expands our best-in-class broadcast and local programming to new audiences,” added Philip Martzolf, president, NBC Affiliate Relations.

Peacock grows its paid subscriber base to 15 million after pulling back shows from Hulu

Peacock adds live TV from all local NBC stations to its Premium Plus tier by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch
Peacock adds live TV from all local NBC stations to its Premium Plus tier

Google, YouTube outline plans for the US midterm elections

Google and its video sharing app YouTube outlined plans for handling the 2022 U.S. midterm elections this week, highlighting tools at its disposal to limit the effort to limit the spread of political misinformation.
When users search for election content on either Google or YouTube, recommendation systems are in place to highlight journalism or video content from authoritative national and local news sources such as The Wall Street Journal, Univision, PBS NewsHour and local ABC, CBS and NBC affiliates.
In today’s blog post, YouTube noted that it has removed “a number of videos” about the U.S. midterms that violate its policies, including videos that make false claims about the 2020 election. YouTube’s rules also prohibit inaccurate videos on how to vote, videos inciting violence and any other content that it determines interferes with the democratic process. The platform adds that it has issued strikes to YouTube channels that violate policies related to the midterms and have temporarily suspended some channels from posting new videos.
Image Credits: Google
Google Search will now make it easier for users to look up election coverage by local and regional news from different states. The company is also rolling out a tool on Google Search that it has used before, which directs voters to accurate information about voter registration and how to vote. Google will be working with The Associated Press again this year to offer users authoritative election results in search.
YouTube will also direct voters to an information panel on voting and a link to Google’s “how to vote” and “how to register to vote” features. Other election-related features YouTube announced today include reminders on voter registration and election resources, information panels beneath videos, recommended authoritative videos within its “watch next” panels and an educational media literacy campaign with tips about misinformation tactics.
On Election Day, YouTube will share a link to Google’s election results tracker, highlight livestreams of election night and include election results below videos. The platform will also launch a tool in the coming weeks that gives people searching for federal candidates a panel that highlights essential information, such as which office they’re running for and what their political party is.
Image Credits: YouTube
With two months left until Election Day, Google’s announcement marks the latest attempt by a tech giant to prepare for the pivotal moment in U.S. history. Meta, TikTok and Twitter have also recently addressed how they will approach the 2022 U.S. midterm elections.
YouTube faced scrutiny over how it handled the 2020 presidential election, waiting until December 2020 to announce a policy that would apply to misinformation swirling around the previous month’s election.
Before the policy was initiated, the platform didn’t remove videos with misleading election-related claims, allowing speculation and false information to flourish. That included a video from One America News Network (OAN) posted on the day after the 2020 election falsely claiming that Trump had won the election. The video was viewed more than 340,000 times, but YouTube didn’t immediately remove it, stating the video didn’t violate its rules.

YouTube declares war on US election misinformation… a month late

In a new study, researchers from New York University found that YouTube’s recommendation system had a part in spreading misinformation about the 2020 presidential election. From October 29 to December 8, 2020, the researchers analyzed the YouTube usage of 361 people to determine if YouTube’s recommendation system steered users toward false claims regarding the election in the immediate aftermath of the election. The researchers concluded that participants who were very skeptical about the election’s legitimacy were recommended significantly more election fraud-related claims than participants who weren’t unsure about the election results.
YouTube pushed back against the study in a conversation with TechCrunch, arguing that its small sample size undermined its potential conclusions. “While we welcome more research, this report doesn’t accurately represent how our systems work,” YouTube spokesperson Ivy Choi told TechCrunch. “We’ve found that the most viewed and recommended videos and channels related to elections are from authoritative sources, like news channels.”
The researchers acknowledged that the number of fraud-related videos in the study was low overall and that the data doesn’t consider what channels the participants were subscribed to. Nonetheless, YouTube is clearly a key vector of potential political misinformation — and one to watch as the U.S. heads into its midterm elections this fall.

Facebook will disable new political ads a week before US midterm elections

Google, YouTube outline plans for the US midterm elections

ZTE is being investigated over possible bribery

ZTE’s struggles with the U.S. government generally haven’t been as high-profile as fellow Chinese mobile giant Huawei, but the company has still had its share of issues in recent years. The latest wrinkle, first reported by NBC and later confirmed by The Wall Street Journal, finds it under investigation over bribery charges.
The issues stem from a 2017 settlement with the U.S. government, which found ZTE pleading guilty of violating U.S. sanctions on Iran. The company was hit with a hefty $892 million fine over accusations of shipping millions of dollars’ worth of equipment to the country over the course of around six years.
TechCrunch reached out to the Justice Department, which ultimately declined to comment. We’re still waiting for an official response from ZTE on this one. The company did, however issue a pretty generic statement to NBC, noting:

ZTE is fully committed to meeting its legal and compliance obligations. The top priority of the company’s leadership team is making ZTE a trusted and reliable business partner in the global marketplace, and the company is proud of the enormous progress it has made. Beyond this, it would not be appropriate for ZTE to comment.

Fair enough, I guess. The details of the deals being investigated are not yet clear, nor is the timeline. Though ZTE’s fine does not preclude the manufacturer from further investigation by the U.S. government, regardless of whether the actions took place before or after.

ZTE is being investigated over possible bribery