The on-going tiff between Roku and Comcast/NBC Universal that has kept the new Peacock premium streaming app off Roku TVs and streaming media players got a lot messier Friday with Roku now possibly facing the loss of nearly 50 TV Everywhere and local station apps.
Negotiations between Roku and NBC Universal reportedly reached an impasse on Peacock carriage after NBC Universal thought a deal had been reached causing the giant media conglomerate to threaten to pull its TV Everywhere streaming apps from the Roku platform.
The blockage of service could possibly start sometime today or tomorrow.
Roku reportedly sent an email to some at-risk customers explaining that Comcast, parent of NBC Universal, is demanding that the streaming platform operator carry the new Peacock streaming service on terms that Roku finds “unreasonable.”
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“This is deeply disappointing,” Roku said in its statement to users, “and the wrong way to treat subscribers, many of whom are Comcast customers, who pay to access these channels via their cable TV subscriptions and now will no longer be able to view these TV Everywhere channels on Roku, their platform of choice. While these NBC TV Everywhere apps represent a very small number of streaming hours on our platform, we believe they are convenient to people who use them, especially when so many Americans are at home.”
NBC Universal fired off a statement saying: “We are disappointed Roku is removing its users’ access to NBC Universal programming – 11 network apps, 12 NBC Owned Station apps, 23 Telemundo Owned Station apps – and continues to block access to the only free premium streaming service available in the market, Peacock. Roku’s unreasonable demands ultimately hurt both their consumers and their consumer equipment partners to whom they’ve promised access to all apps in the marketplace. “
NBC Universal reportedly objected to Roku’s demands for revenue sharing levels from NBC Universal content, ad inventory and integration into NBC Universal advertising technology.
We reached out to Roku for comment and continue to wait for a response on the matter as this was posted.
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By Greg Tarr
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