I somehow have not had time yet to watch Hamilton (I know!), but I have a feeling tens of millions of people around the globe have done so since the musical hit Disney+ last week. Like most of my media-reporter colleagues, I would love to know exactly how many homes have streamed the show, and when they streamed it. But I also don’t think it really matters, at least not for the long-term future of Disney+. Fact is, Bob Iger’s decision to cancel Hamilton’s planned 2021 theatrical release and have it debut on his new streaming service was an immediate win, both because it (almost surely) attracted new subscribers and because it made the platform more beloved to those who had already subscribed. Disney is a brand associated with warmth and family, and making Hamilton available more than a year early — and not charging audiences anything extra for it — is the sort of thing people remember when they’re deciding whether or not to renew their subscriptions. It was also just the right thing to do for a pandemic-weary planet — unlike, say, the decision to reopen Disney World when COVID-19 cases are skyrocketing out of control in Florida (and much of America). Stay safe, and thanks for reading. –Joe Adalian

Reach Joe on Twitter @tvmojoe or email buffering@vulture.com.

Confession: I kinda love the endless promos for Peacock that have been filling seemingly every commercial break on NBCUniversal-owned TV networks the past two months ahead of its July 15 national launch. Unlike the too-cute, too-vague ads for Quibi, or the very generic campaign WarnerMedia did on behalf of HBOMax, the Peacock creative just … pops. It’s smart, it’s catchy, and — as this 60-second spot illustrates — it effectively sells a single, simple message: Peacock is the streaming service that’s free.

It’s certainly a timely pitch. Consumers have been hit with a flood of new streamers begging for their money over the past six months, while cord-cutting platforms once designed as cheaper alternatives to cable have been jacking up their monthly fees. (YouTube TV raising its price 30 percent right now has to be one of the most tone-deaf decisions by a media company since Qwikster … though history probably won’t be kind to Quibi, either.) Tens of millions of Americans are out of work right now, and the economy for everyone else pretty much sucks. A major new streaming service from one of the oldest and most respected TV brands, one that’s backed with a promise to invest $2 billion in content right from the start — and it costs viewers nothing? Seems like a good idea!

“We believe that we’ve identified this white space in the market, which is a premium, ad-supported streaming service,” Matt Strauss, the man in charge of Peacock, told me a few weeks ago when we spoke by phone. He says NBCUniversal did research and discovered there was what he called “subscription fatigue” among consumers navigating the streaming marketplace. “People, we found, were kind of questioning how many of these services do I need to subscribe to,” Strauss says. What’s more, NBCUniversal and parent company Comcast could see how fast free, ad-supported streamers such as Pluto, STIRR, and IMDb TV were growing, even though none of them offered much by way of original content and featured mostly older TV shows and movies. “You’re seeing consumers willing to make tradeoffs, where they’re willing to watch kind of ‘good enough’ content that’s more economical rather than having to [spend] money for another subscription service.”

And that’s where Peacock sees an opening: Instead of trying to take on Netflix or HBOMax and their seemingly unlimited programming budgets, the Comcast-owned NBCUniversal is betting Peacock can be a fancier, better, and far better-stocked version of those aforementioned ad-supported services. “We really said, we’re gonna zig while others zag,” Strauss explains. “We believe that the moment is right for us to come into market with a premium offering.”

How it all breaks down: Peacock is stressing the “free” part of its business model even though the best version of the service won’t be free, at least not to everyone. A basic version of the service, with well over 7,500 hours of content, will be available to anyone who downloads the app.  The total Peacock experience — including full access to current programs on the NBCU broadcast and cable channels — will also be free, as long as you have a cable or Internet subscription with one of Peacock’s distribution partners. But if you don’t have the right bundle, this so-called “Peacock premium” tier (which will have almost twice as much content) will cost $5 per month. You can also pay another $5 per month for an ad-free version of the service. “It’s really about giving consumers choice,” Strauss says. “If you just want to download Peacock right out of the gate, start enjoying it, and not have to worry about paying anything for it, you don’t have to. We think it’s gonna be a really good experience. But if you do [want to upgrade], that choice is there.”

Despite having these options available now, Strauss says his hope is that within the next year or two, the full version of Peacock will be free for almost anyone with a cable or Internet plan, even if they get their Internet through a wireless carrier. Getting the deals needed to do that before launch just wasn’t possible, however, necessitating the need for free and premium tiers. “We really believe that we’re going to get [increased market share] primarily through bundling, not through people [spending] incremental dollars to get access to Peacock premium.”

Will it play? The tagline for Peacock’s plentiful ads has been “Can’t Not Watch,” a clever evolution of sister network NBC’s legendary “Must-See TV” campaign. Of course, it also immediately gives media writers a very effective headline should the service stumble.  I’ll be digging deeper into the Peacock playbook next week on Vulture, but I don’t think reporters will get the chance to use Peacock’s promotional puffery against it. NBCUniversal’s broadcast and cable brands are pretty powerful, and Peacock seems to me a great way to build a bridge from the linear past into the streaming future. Younger audiences clearly have no use for the endless ads on regular TV, but Peacock is smartly limiting ad inventory to five minutes or less per hour. Anyone used to watching The Office on Netflix will probably find even those five minutes offensive, but I think there are plenty of viewers out there who will welcome a solid streaming alternative that costs nothing.

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Earlier this week on Vulture, I did a deep dive into Comedy Central, which like many of its ViacomCBS-owned cable siblings is moving away from its previous cable-centric focus and instead thinking of itself as a multi-platform brand. As part of my reporting for the story, I got the chance to talk with ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish, and while you can read some of his insights in the aforementioned article — click here! — he said a few other interesting things that didn’t fit into the story, either because of space restrictions or because they weren’t directly related to what’s happening at Comedy Central:

• CBS recently simulcast the BET Awards and aired a weekly series of movie classics from ViacomCBS-owned Paramount Pictures. You can expect much more of that sort of blurring of the lines between networks and platforms in the months ahead. “Unlike 20 years ago” — the last time CBS and Viacom were under one roof — “we are running one ViacomCBS,” Bakish told me. “I was at Viacom when CBS was part of it before. And at the time we did not have one ad-sales force. We did not have one distribution force. We did not have one content-licensing force, all of which we have today. And we didn’t have the degree of collaboration that we have today.” This doesn’t mean individual groups won’t still operate with some degree of independence, however. “You need to have executives accountable for businesses,” Bakish said. “George Cheeks is certainly accountable for CBS, just like Chris McCarthy’s accountable for a set of U.S. cable networks and associated brands.”

• Much the way Star Trek spinoffs are all over CBS All Access, expect more franchises to expand onto the streaming platform (and other outlets.) McCarthy is obviously already working to take advantage of the company’s IP, with reboots of Beavis and Butt-Head, Clone High, and more in the works; Bakish thinks much more can be done. “If you look at ViacomCBS and you look at the collection of franchises we own, it’s incredible,” he said. “South Park — can you do a spin out there? Paramount, you look at Yellowstone, maybe there’s something to do there. Franchises are a big deal.” And while ViacomCBS has made it clear it will at times sell off rights to its IP to other platforms — think Facebook Live’s new version of The Real World — Bakish thinks what All Access has done with Star Trek (and The Twilight Zone) can be duplicated with other titles. “Think about all the flagship brands being there, and essentially all of them doing it.” he says. “It’s going to be really cool.”

Bakish and I got on to the topic of franchises because I, a man who loves bad ’70s TV way too much, asked the CEO of a major company whether or not he would consider doing a new version of The Love Boat. “I don’t know about The Love Boat. I used to watch it as a kid,” Bakish said, likely texting his publicist to get him off the call. Okay, he was a bit less cold to the idea: “Stranger things have happened,” he said, perhaps trying to make me feel better. “[But] your point is actually a very relevant one … How do you take something that is known and bring it back? And you’re going to see that in the streaming space too, as we talked about our original IP, that franchises will be key to the strategy going forward.” Finally, Isaac’s origin story will get the movie it deserves.

• It won’t just be new shows: Bakish said we can expect to see even more ViacomCBS library content on All Access in coming months. The streamer added more than 100 Paramount movies in May, and shows from almost all of the company’s cable brands are migrating over to the platform, even as ViacomCBS continues to license shows (on a non-exclusive basis) to rivals such as Peacock. “The company understands this is a mission critical initiative,” he said. “And the way we unlock the greatest opportunity is bringing to bear a full range of assets, which includes both our library assets and our franchises, which can come to life in the form of new originals on All Access. So yeah, they’re very much part of that mission.”

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• If you’re a Buffering subscriber, you’ve probably already read Benjamin Wallace’s meticulously reported peek behind the curtains at Quibi for the TV issue of New York. It’s a great read, of course, one which goes beyond the usual narrative about why the platform is struggling, i.e., nobody wants what Quibi is selling. Yes, there is an argument to be made that Quibi was doomed from the get-go because people don’t want to pay for a short-form content service that breaks movies up into chapters. (The anonymous exec who dissed the whole enterprise to Wallace in five words — “I have a pause button” — should quit her job and become a writer.) But Wallace shows how Quibi founder Jeffrey Katzenberg’s well-known tendency to micromanage his businesses may be the real reason the platform has disappointed so far. What worked for him in the Hollywood of old may be killing him in the town’s new digital reality. (By the way, folks who signed up for Quibi at launch started seeing their free trials expire this week. I didn’t sign up for the paid service, and it looks like not many other people did, either.)

• As noted earlier, YouTube TV has decided it wants to lose a big chunk of its subscriber base by raising its price to $65 per month. As an early adopter of the service, I am seriously weighing whether to remain a customer; I’ll probably stay because the user interface and unlimited cloud DVR put it light years ahead of any other direct-to-consumer live TV service. Fast Company’s Jared Newman has a good explainer on why the Google-owned platform has had to raise its prices so quickly. I agree with him that media conglomerates such as Disney and ViacomCBS charging so much for content (and forcing YouTube TV and cable providers to distribute all their channels, or none of them) is a big reason why prices keep going up. But Google is a pretty big company, too. It should use its leverage to figure out a way to make skinny bundles skinny again.