TV authentication? That was so 2018 — at least for NBCUniversal.
Steve Burke, CEO, NBCUniversal, told CNBC “authentication” — giving traditional pay TV subscribers access to digital content via an authenticated process — has been too difficult and hard to promote.
This is among the main reasons that NBCU announced an effort to launch a new mostly ad-supported streaming service — consisting of live programming (including CNBC), on-demand and library programming, as well as third-party content.
Burke says NBCU projects getting what amounts to $5 a month per user in advertising revenue. The potential here: NBCU reaches over 90 million U.S. households on pay TV services. In addition, sister company Comcast Cable and its new European TV broadcaster Sky plan to roll out the as-yet unnamed service free to its 52 million subscribers.
The service plans to run far fewer TV commercials — three to five minutes per hour — than traditional TV network ad loads, which can run around 15 minutes of non-programming advertising/promotional messaging.
