After floundering for nearly 18 months with limited uptake for its paid tiers, Comcast and NBCUniversal may have finally found the right promotional partner to goose subscription signups for Peacock.
Those U.S. users of Google TV and Android TV devices who have activated their account profiles from Nov. 22 through Dec. 31 will get six months free of the $4.99-a-month Peacock Premium service.
The connected TV OS business is a competitive one, but Google will undoubtedly sell millions of Google TV/Android TV-enabled smart TVs, as well as streaming sticks and dongles, this holiday shopping season. That represents an opportunity for Peacock, which claimed more than 54 million sign-ups, mostly for its free tier, as the end of the third quarter, but which is believed to have less than 20 million users paying for Peacock Premium and the $9.99 completely-ad-free Peacock Premium Plus.
Aggressive promotions have helped proliferate Apple TV Plus. For the first 18 months of the platform, Apple gave away the $4.99-a-month service for a full year to anyone who bought an iPhone, Macbook Pro or any other Apple gadget.
Making a wave of Google TV announcements, Google also said that Pluto TV programming is being added to the new "Live" tab within the Google TV OS.
