Peacock Starts Streaming Local News

Looking to stay competitive with CBS, Amazon and other streaming rivals, NBCUniversal is adding free, 24/7 access to NBC-owned news channels for all Peacock users in seven major markets, reports MediaPost.

Peacock streaming access launched on Jan. 20 for five markets/stations: NBC 5 Chicago (WMAQ), NBC 10 Philadelphia (WCAU), NBC10 Boston (WBTS) and New England Cable Network (NECN), and NBC 6 Miami (WTVJ).

News channels from two more NBC stations will launch on Peacock in the months ahead, according to NBCU: NBC 4 New York (WNBC) and NBC 4 Los Angeles (KNBC).

The new channels titled NBC Chicago News, NBC Philadelphia News, NBC Boston News and NBC South Florida News offer Peacock subscribers around-the-clock access to comprehensive, local news coverage.

In Philadelphia, The Inquirer reports  there are some major limitations. The NBC Philadelphia News channel is only live when NBC10 News is airing a new broadcast. Otherwise, users will see a rerun of a previous newscast.

When watching Thursday morning while the Today show was airing, NBC Philadelphia News was streaming NBC10′s 5 a.m. broadcast without noting it wasn’t live, which meant the newscast’s weather and traffic reports were two hours old.

Also, there is no way to pause or rewind the broadcast in Peacock. So if you missed something, you’re out of luck. And the new station doesn’t include programming from NBC Sports Philadelphia, so don’t expect any local sports coverage outside of what appears during a normal newscast.

Local news is becoming a competitive differentiator in the ongoing streaming wars.

For instance, CBS’s CBSN streaming news service is available live, 24/7 via CBSNews.com/live and on all CBS News mobile apps.

As of October 2021, Amazon Fire TV’s free news app was serving 158 U.S. cities through 259 channels.

NBCUniversal announced earlier this month it would stream every event from the 2022 Winter Olympics, including its studio coverage, live on Peacock to subscribers. That’s significantly different than how they handled the Tokyo Olympics last year, when the company only streamed gymnastics, track and field, and a handful of other events live. The Winter Olympics are scheduled to begin Feb. 4.

Comcast has been tight-lipped about how many people have subscribed to Peacock since its debut in April 2020. Over the summer, the company revealed it had 54 million sign-ups, which is different than paid subscribers to the platform’s premium tier.