Peacock-Paramount+ Merger Rumors, Questions, and What-Ifs

The Town with Matthew Belloni

The Ringer

Society & Culture

4.3 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 20 February 2024

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Matt is joined by Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw to discuss Peacock’s strong start to 2024 and the prospect of a possible joint venture or “commercial partnership” with Paramount+, as reported by The Wall Street Journal late last week. They run through the logistics of a merger, the curious timing of the Journal’s story, the critical role live sports rights play, Warren Buffett's sale of a third of his stake in Paramount Global, and who is most to blame for Paramount's struggles. Matt finishes the show with a prediction about John Oliver’s HBO show, ‘Last Week Tonight.’ For a 20 percent discount on Matt’s Hollywood insider newsletter, ‘What I’m Hearing ...,’ click here. Email us your thoughts! thetown@spotify.com Host: Matt Belloni Guest: Lucas Shaw Producers: Craig Horlbeck and Jessie Lopez Theme Song: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	There are a lot of quarterbacks in the NFL draft this year.
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0:12.2	We'll tell you about everything, which includes which quarterbacks are good, which quarterbacks are bad,
0:15.6	and which quarterbacks are just Kirk Cousins.
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0:39.0	It is Tuesday, February 20th. Where were you on Saturday, January 13th, 2024?
0:46.5	A monumental day in Hollywood history we learned from Nielsen today was the most streamed day ever,
0:53.1	with 40.8 billion minutes of content streamed over the
0:56.8	internet in the U.S. That happened to be the day of the first NFL playoff game exclusively
1:02.2	streamed that was on Peacock. And that was not a coincidence, of course. January is usually
1:07.5	the biggest TV viewing month of the year, but the new Nielsen numbers showed that this January generated the highest monthly TV usage in four years, minus those first
1:16.5	couple pandemic months. And sports really drove everything. In addition to the wildcard game,
1:21.6	Peacock had a great month, actually, 1.6% of total viewing. Still small, but bigger than Max,
1:29.0	catching up with Disney Plus,
1:32.7	and with Seth McBarlane's TED show and the Traders' Reality Competition,
1:35.1	both charting on the list of top originals,
1:36.9	it's a pretty good month for Peacock.
1:39.3	That stat is particularly interesting to me because of some news from the Wall Street Journal last week
	...

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