Plucking Peacock

Streamers rip NBC app as Olympic flameout

THE reviews are in and they’re not very good. Customers who signed up for NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service to watch the Tokyo Games are raising hell over their viewing experience as ratings for the Olympics plummet.

New subscribers flooded Reddit message boards over the weekend to complain about a lack of live streaming and glitches in their commercial-free viewing, among other concerns.

“I signed up for Peacock premium for the Olympics and I can’t for the life of me figure out how to watch live.

What is going on?,” one user lamented. “For all the time I spent trying to figure out how to watch after paying, I could have found pirated streams hours ago.”

Despite advertising Peacock as the place to go for all things Olympics, Peacock is only livestreaming certain events, including gymnastics, track and field, and men’s basketball, sources said.

What’s more, if fans miss the 13-hours-ahead-of-New York livestreams from Tokyo, they may need to wait days to catch replays of their favorite athletes competing.

The women’s gymnastics all around final, for example, airs live on Peacock Tuesday at 6:45 a.m. Fans unable to catch the earlymorning finale will have to wait until July 31 for a replay.

“Omg it’s absolutely the worst!!!” another Reddit viewer griped. “You would think streaming would be a godsend for the multisport olympics, but no, nbc had to go and screw it up.”

Yet another user complained of having forked over $9.99 to go ad-free, only to be forced to watch blank screens where the commercial breaks would be.

Peacock is free for limited programming with ads; $4.99 a month for unlimited shows, replays and daily livestreamed events with ads — and $9.99 a month for unlimited ad-free content.

The Web gripes come as NBC over the weekend said ratings for the opening ceremony hit a 33-year low, cratering to 17 million.

That spells trouble for NBC, which “invested a great deal of expectations in how the Olympics would launch Peacock,” warns media analyst Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson.

“I think the writing is already on the wall.”