• by Wayne Friedman , July 31, 2025

NBCUniversal’s domestic advertising for its legacy TV networks/TV stations declined 7.2% versus a year ago to $1.85 billion, according to the company’s recent second-quarter earnings release.

The drop was partly due to lower political advertising in the period versus last year’s strong Presidential election season.

NBCU’s premium streaming platform Peacock helped mitigate this decline with a gain in ad revenue. The company did not disclose actual revenue in the period, but MoffettNathanson Research estimates that to be $523 million ($402 million in Q2 2024).

Overall, Peacock posted a 20% rise in overall revenue (subscription and advertising) to $1.2 billion. It also narrowed quarterly losses to $101 million versus $348 million in the year-ago period. However, Peacock did not see subscriber growth in the period, remaining at 41 million.

Looking ahead to TV’s upfront advertising market -- where buying commitments are made ahead for the entire upcoming September through May TV season -- NBCU claims a 15% increase in ad volume, and a 20% rise for Peacock versus the upfront process a year ago.

Media analysts estimate overall deals to be in the $7 billion to $7.5 billion range.

NBCU posted a 1.8% rise in overall revenue in the second quarter to $6.4 billion -- primarily due to gains in international networks (15% to $1.3 billion) and a slight rise in domestic distribution business, up 2% to $2.8 billion.

Looking at Comcast, its core pay TV video subscribers witnessed a net loss of 325,000 traditional video subscribers, per its second-quarter earnings release, narrowing slightly from its 419,000 drop in the year-ago period. Comcast now stands at 11.8 million subscribers

Mid-day Thursday trading of Comcast stock was up 2% in mid-day trading; and is down 12% year-to-date.

Earlier this week the now biggest legacy pay TV provider, Charter Communications, showed some surprising news in video -- narrowing its losses versus previous periods, just 80,000 subscribers.

Analysts were expecting around a 220,000 fall. They credit Charter’s aggressive hybrid packaging of popular streaming platforms -- including Disney+ -- as a reason for this improvement. As of June 30, Charter now has 12.5 million video customers.