NBC’s Peacock streaming service hits 35 million signups

    
    Angela Lang/CNET
    Peacock, the partly free streaming service that kicked off this year as the new home to stream The Office, has 35 million signups, Comcast’s NBCUniversal — its parent company — said Monday in a presentation for advertisers. That’s up from the 33 million signups the company reported at the end of last year.?
    Signups, as a metric, includes both free users and paid accounts, which pay either $5 or $10 a month to unlock Peacock’s full catalog. It also may include people who registered with the service earlier but have stopped using it.?
    Peacock?was?NBCUniversal’s entrant in the so-called?streaming wars, when a flood of new video services spilled out from tech and media giants starting in late 2019. Competing with the likes of?Netflix, Disney PlusHBO Maxand Paramount Plus,?Peacock?is unique among the new crop of rivals in offering a free tier, which lets anyone in the US watch about two-thirds of the catalog with advertising. It also has paid memberships: You can unlock the full library of shows and movies for a price of $5 a month plus ads, and a $10-a-month upgrade makes the service mostly ad-free.?
    By comparison, Disney Plus is $7 a month, rising to $8 later inMarch, and HBO Max is $15. Neither has advertising.