NBCU’s streaming chief isn’t worried about you canceling cable

Today, I'm talking with Matt Strauss, who is the chairman of direct-to-consumer at NBCUniversal. That's a big fancy title that means Matt's in charge of Peacock and every other streaming video offering the company has worldwide.

That includes everything from Fandango and its Fandango at Home service - which used to be Vudu - to Rotten Tomatoes to the core platform that powers the Now TV service run by Sky in Europe.

That's a lot, and all of that is under the overall ownership of Comcast, which is in the middle of its own massive transition as its traditional cable TV business continues to fade away. Matt actually spent almost two decades at Comcast working on its cable products before switching over to NBCU, and I was really interested in his view on how the economics of the TV business will shake out as almost everyone moves to streaming.

Matt also oversees the global streaming platform that Peacock and other services at NBCU run on, and I wanted to know that big tech investment is generating the kind of economies of scale that really pay off over time - stuff that tech companies think about all the time, but media companies have had to learn. 

One thing I really wanted to talk to Matt about was how Peacock handled the Olympics this year - it felt like things really clicked for the platform in Paris over the summer, and the idea that all the coverage could be served up in multiple different formats on demand and live really worked. It turns out that a lot of these ideas have been brewing for a long time - for a decade or more in some cases. 

There's a lot in this one - tech, media, sports, and culture, all at once. It's quite a ride.

Our usual disclosure before we start - NBCU is an investor in The Verge's parent company, Vox Media, but they have no control over our newsroom, and I remain free to demand NFL games in 4K HDR of their executives on my show whenever I want. You're on the hook now, Matt.