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NBC is purposely making its cord-cutting version of its streaming service worse than the free version that comes with a pay-TV subscription.
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NBC is considering a $10-per-month price for cord cutters, and it already estimates revenue from those consumers will be immaterial, sources say.
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NBC's free streaming product will include live linear programming and same-season shows, but its cord-cutting product will not, sources say.
The streaming wars -- the race to launch subscription video products -- has been driven by an underlying concept: the traditional pay-TV bundle is dying as millions of U.S. households cut the cord each year and shift their video consumption to services like Netflix NFLX .
This has been a hard pill to swallow for legacy media companies, which derive billions of dollars from traditional pay-TV. Yet, many of those same media companies are coming to grips with reality and beginning to disrupt their own business models, headlined by Disney DIS 's $6.99 Disney+ offering later this year.
That's not the case for Comcast CMCSA 's NBCUniversal (the parent company of CNBC and CNBC.com).
NBC doesn't want you to cut the cord. Maybe this isn't too surprising since its owner is the largest U.S. cable company. But it's unusual because it directly contradicts the disruption narrative. Instead of submissively accepting that the pay-TV world is ending, NBC is taking a stand and fighting back.
The proof is in the details of NBC's streaming service, coming in the spring of next year.
NBC's ad-supported streaming service will be free to all customers that pay for traditional live television -- whether through Comcast or any other provider, including virtual pay-tv bundles like Google GOOGL 's YouTube TV or AT&T T 's DirecTV Now, assuming partnership deals are struck, according to people familiar with the matter.
For those that have cut the cord, it will probably be about $10, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions on price are still ongoing.
CNBC has also learned that the free version of service for pay-tv subscribers will include live linear channels, same-season episodes and past-season episodes. Customers will be able to watch NBC programming anywhere, on any device, independent of their cable provider's footprint. NBC will have non-exclusive access to all of the programming it sells to Hulu for the streaming service, as part of the deal with Disney the two companies announced on Tuesday .
But the $10 version for cord-cutters won't include live linear channels and it won't include same-season shows. You'll get a bunch of re-runs, most of which will also be available on Hulu if you already subscribe to that service. And you'll get a few originals for the streaming service, the quality of which is to be determined.