Peacock rebuilds its mobile app around vertical video and franchise hubs

The short version

NBCUniversal is overhauling Peacock's mobile app, and the centerpiece is short-form vertical video — the format popularized by TikTok and YouTube Shorts. Engadget reports the redesign is rolling out in stages and may not reach every user until next year.

Company chairman Matt Strauss described the objective in retention terms, telling The Hollywood Reporter that the aim is to "win another hour per user, per month." He also said the company needs to think of itself less as a streaming service and more as an entertainment platform, per the same reporting.

The reasoning: short clips from Peacock shows keep subscribers opening the app between full-length viewing sessions, and may funnel some of them toward episodes on a TV.

Franchise hubs

The redesign adds dedicated pages for individual franchises. A Bravo hub, "Your Bravoverse," is billed as a personalized space for two decades of Bravo moments. The Office gets its own hub. Some pages carry interactive extras — the Law & Order page will host small video games, while the NBA page will put player statistics and deeper game information directly beneath the live feed in a split-screen layout.

Membership perks

NBCUniversal is teasing a loyalty program for "eligible subscribers" offering rewards, benefits and activities tied to the movies and shows they watch. Details are scarce. Engadget reports the tiers appear to hinge on how long someone has subscribed, with example perks including temporary Instacart memberships and a New York Times Cooking subscription.

Technical additions

• A "dynamic video player" that switches automatically between vertical and horizontal orientation depending on the device.
• Continued experimentation with live vertical video.
• Generative AI built in to power what the company calls conversational AI search.

Microdramas

Peacock also intends to keep funding microdramas — serialized dramas, often around a minute per installment, that together tell a longer story. The company's first scripted entry in the format, Charmed by a Southern Monster, was announced for the mobile app.

Why the timing matters

Engadget notes that Peacock recently posted its first profitable quarter and has now recorded two consecutive quarters in the black. Whether the redesign sustains that is an open question; the rollout will take months to complete.

Our read

Interpretation, not confirmed fact: the pieces of this announcement serve different purposes. Vertical video and the dynamic player are retention mechanics aimed at habitual phone use. The fandom hubs — particularly the NBA split-screen stats view and the Law & Order games — are the features most likely to change a daily routine, because they add something to do while watching rather than just somewhere else to scroll.

The membership program is the least defined element and the hardest to judge; named perks like a grocery membership and a recipe subscription are useful but loosely connected to the television content they are meant to reward. And "conversational AI search" is a label, not yet a demonstrated feature.

For viewers, the practical question is whether the app becomes easier to navigate between short clips and full episodes without feeling like two products stapled together. For NBCUniversal, it is whether the redesign moves the time-spent number that Strauss named. Neither is answerable until the rollout finishes.

Original reporting by Engadget.