Matt Strauss, chairman of the NBCUniversal Media Group, said the company’s decision to consolidate its broadcast and streaming operations into a single structure is central to Peacock’s growth, in an interview published by The Verge’s Decoder podcast. Strauss said NBCU collapsed separate broadcast and streaming programming, marketing, product and technology, decision sciences and research, and advertising teams into single groups roughly 18 months ago. Those teams are now judged on expanding the whole portfolio’s reach and engagement rather than on individual platforms, he said.

Strauss described NBC’s broadcast reach as an advantage as audiences fragment, saying the network has continued to post ratings growth and has served as a megaphone for Peacock. Peacock, in turn, has reached cord cutters and viewers who did not grow up watching NBC or its cable networks, he said. He summarized the approach as content first and platform second.

The chairman pointed to 2026 results as evidence the structure is working. He said NBC is the number one network in total viewers, citing a 17-day stretch dubbed “Legendary February” that included the Super Bowl, the Milan Cortina Olympics and the NBA All-Star Game and reached more than 225 million viewers. He also cited Love Island as the summer’s top streaming show, the World Cup as the most-watched Spanish-language sporting event in US history on Telemundo and Peacock, The Five-Star Weekend as the company’s top scripted drama, Sunday Night Football as the number one show for 15 consecutive years with a kickoff above 25 million viewers, and an NBA tip-off between the Knicks and Sixers that he said was the highest-rated tip-off in NBA history.

Moving viewers between platforms is a key part of the plan, Strauss said, noting that 40 percent of Love Island viewers also watched the World Cup. He said Peacock became a profitable business only this year and remains far from matching Netflix’s scale.

The interview followed major corporate changes at NBCU. Comcast spun most of its NBCU cable channels into a separate company called Versant about a month after Strauss’s previous appearance on the show, and Comcast is now spinning off the NBCU business entirely into a standalone company. Strauss said the decision to pursue the full spinoff was made by Brian Roberts and Mike Cavanagh and that he was not in the room when it was made.

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