Comcast may be feeling more tethered to Jordan Peele after today.
The cable and media giant reported its first-quarter earnings this morning, revealing some steep declines for its NBCUniversal unit, mainly due to tough comparisons from the year before. Revenue for the unit fell to $8.3 billion, down 12.5% versus the same period last year. More specifically, those declines were for NBCU’s cable TV and broadcast TV divisions, which dropped 9.2% and 29.4%, respectively. Theme parks were also down slightly.
Comcast blamed the TV declines on the absence of two major sports events that aired during the same period in 2018: the PyeongChang Olympics and Super Bowl LII.
One bright spot in NBCU’s revenue was for its filmed entertainment division, which jumped 7.4% to $1.8 billion for the quarter. Theatrical revenue alone jumped more than 5%, Comcast said, thanks in part to strong box office performances from How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World and Us.
Jordan Peele’s doppelganger thriller did not match the hype of his first movie, Get Out, but it has earned $171 million at the box office (according to Box Office Mojo), a respectable haul for Comcast’s Universal Pictures considering it was a mid-budget movie.
NBCU’s numbers are below. You can check out Comcast’s full earnings report here.
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