NBCUniversal Media Group Chairman Matt Strauss says the company’s planned separation from Comcast is being greeted inside NBCU as more than a corporate restructuring — it is being viewed as a chance to accelerate.
Speaking Thursday at an investor conference hosted by BofA Securities, Strauss said there is “genuine excitement” within the company about the forthcoming move. “We feel really good about our trajectory and our growth, and I think the independence is going to allow us to move faster. It’s like a catalyst for us,” he said.
Comcast revealed in June that it plans to separate its Philadelphia-based pay-TV, broadband and wireless business from NBCUniversal. The move comes after the spinoff of most of NBCU’s cable networks into a separate company, Versant Media, and aligns with a separation strategy Warner Bros. Discovery had been planning before agreeing to be acquired by Paramount.
The split is expected to take about a year to complete. While executives have not publicly described the deal in those terms, the move was motivated in part by Comcast’s sagging stock price, which has reflected growing concern about pressure on broadband growth.
Strauss did not address mergers and acquisitions during the BofA session. Comcast Co-CEOs Mike Cavanagh and Brian Roberts, however, told investors during the company’s second-quarter earnings call in July that conversations were already underway with potential deal partners.
A faster, more flexible NBCU
For Strauss, the argument for independence centers on speed and optionality. He pointed to NBCU’s distribution agreement with YouTube, reached earlier this summer, as the kind of partnership the company wants to keep pursuing.
“That’s the type of innovation that we’re looking to continue driving,” Strauss said. “So, I wouldn’t say that the independence changes how we’re looking at media. I think it just gives us more flexibility to move quicker.”
He framed the company’s strategy as a broader reset rather than a simple rebalancing of old and new platforms. “We’re not trying to build a broadcast business sitting next to a streaming business,” Strauss said. “We’re trying to build a digital-first new media company where we’re trying to get the maximum return for our investment across the portfolio.”
The remarks offered a window into how NBCU leadership is talking about life after the Comcast separation: not as a retreat from traditional media assets, but as an attempt to organize the company around digital engagement, partnerships and monetization across its portfolio.
Peacock’s next phase
BofA media analyst Jessica Reif Ehrlich, who moderated the discussion, repeatedly voiced enthusiasm for NBCU during the session. She closed by asking Strauss, who oversaw the launch of Peacock in 2020, what he expects the streaming service to become over the next five years.
Strauss said the opportunity lies in reshaping what a streaming experience can be. “There is a tremendous opportunity to reimagine the experience for streaming,” he said.
He identified fan engagement as a key area of focus, particularly through added offerings around core programming. Strauss said NBCU is looking at ways to “super-serve” fans with games, podcasts and other personalized experiences that extend beyond the main show.
One model NBCU hopes to replicate, he said, is Love Island USA. Episodes ran six days a week over the summer, giving the company a concentrated look at how engaged viewers behaved once an episode ended.
According to Strauss, NBCU initially used typical algorithmic tools to keep viewers watching other programming. But executives noticed that many fans did not want to move on to another series.
“What we found is that at the end of the episode, many of those fans didn’t want to watch another show. They wanted to continue engaging with Love Island,” Strauss said. “So what happens? They leave our platform. They go to social media. They’re looking for clips, for games, for podcasts, and that is engagement that we built, but we’re not monetizing, because we’re not really providing that level of experience outside the premiumness of the content.”
That realization, Strauss said, has prompted NBCU to think more broadly about what it means to be an entertainment platform.
A major data point came from Love Island viewing habits: 30% of viewing for the show was on mobile devices. In response, NBCU built out a vertical video offering on Peacock and introduced it last year.
“We’re not creating the behavior,” Strauss said. “We’re tapping into the behavior, but we’re moving that engagement back to our platform.”
He said NBCU’s management team is now examining how to keep audiences engaged after the episode itself ends. “When you finish an episode, it’s not the end. It’s the beginning,” Strauss said, describing a model in which Peacock can offer viewers more ways to interact with the programming they already care about while supporting growth and monetization.
What Happens Next?
The Comcast-NBCUniversal separation is expected to take about a year to complete. In the meantime, Strauss’s comments indicate NBCU will continue leaning into partnerships, Peacock product development and fan-focused extensions around programming as it prepares for a more independent future.