• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, Today

A growing number of legacy-owned streaming platforms are now profitable -- including Disney+, Hulu, and HBO Max -- but some are not there yet.

This includes NBCU's Peacock, which for some time has been behind other streamers with regard to number of financial data points. 

But during Thursday’s Comcast earnings call, there was a positive outlook in some areas.

As the company reported rising gains driven by the Milan Cortina Olympics, the Super Bowl, and most recently, NBCU's new NBA contract, Jason Armstrong, chief financial officer of Comcast Corp., said this reflects “a meaningful inflection point with Peacock expected to approach profitability.” This could potentially happen in the second quarter.

On the surface, it looks like a long road ahead for the company -- with a first-quarter 2026 net loss of $432 million -- and for legacy owned businesses in general. Armstrong did not provide any guidance with the timeline.

This comes at the same time of steadily declining, but still profitable, linear TV network business in terms of slipping advertising and distribution revenues.

Paramount Skydance's Paramount+ seems to be in better shape -- with expectations to be fully profitable by the end of this year. 

For example, NBCU’s Peacock now represents 25% of overall ad revenues.  Good news is that Peacock now has 46 million paying subscribers -- up from 41 million a year ago.

But looking at the industry premium streaming leader -- Netflix, at 81.4 million -- it seems there is a long way to go for Peacock and other streaming services when it comes to overall reach.

This comes as a mature premium marketplace has made consumers more picky in the "must have" platforms they keep and other streamers where they decide to "churn" -- cancel and then re-sign on to a service on a month-to-month basis.

Still, Peacock should take a positive spin from other profitable services in terms of those subscriber levels: Disney+ at 55.2 million subscribers, Hulu with 51 million and HBO Max at 54.8 million.

What’s the difference? While those services also are betting heavily on sports, they also have higher-profile sustaining scripted/non-scripted entertainment TV series and movies. 

While it has the buzzworthy reality TV show “The Traitors” and new scripted originals to come “The Miniature Wife” and “The ‘Burbs,” that might not be enough.