I don't think you guys know this about me, but I am a fan of professional wrestling. I'll let that shock set in for a minute. If you've followed my cameo appearances on the Shacknews podcast and the Shacknews Dump, you'll also know that I got suckered into subbing to Peacock when it first launched. Well, I'm almost a year into my subscription and now it looks like it's paying dividends, because this week marked the official debut of World Wrestling Entertainment on Peacock!
For those who don't know the story, WWE and NBC Universal struck a deal a few months ago that will see the WWE Network migrate to Peacock. Having heard this, I immediately cancelled my WWE Network subscription in anticipation of the move. And, as of Thursday, WWE is now a part of Peacock. Some might be wondering, how is my experience so far? Well, here are the highs and lows of WWE on Peacock so far:
Live shows are commercial-free
WWE Fastlane is happening as I'm typing this and, from what I've seen, there are no commercial interruptions during the live shows. I'm on the "Peacock with ads" plan and I'm happy to report that I haven't seen Jake from State Farm once. That bodes well for Wrestlemania, which will air exclusively on Peacock.
The video quality is pretty great, to boot. I've had no issues running the live shows from my iPad, Apple TV, and Xbox One. As far as the live shows go, I'm not missing the WWE Network at all with the notable exception of one feature. Right now, it doesn't look like I can rewind the live shows. That's a big omission compared to the WWE Network, because lord knows I can't pay attention to everything. (And sometimes I nod off, depending on how bad some of these segments can get.)
On-Demand shows are not
The downside is, if you're on the "Peacock with ads" plan, you're going to get a lot of commercials on any show you pull up on-demand. That's not bad in itself, except the breaks come randomly! WWE will often throw their shows to a commercial break at designated points and if those are the only spots you see a Peacock commercial break, that'd be fine. That's not the case.
For example, I tried this thing out after I came home on Thursday. I booted up the latest episode of NXT UK. Imagine my surprise when Peacock threw me to a commercial break in mid-headlock and in an announcer's mid-sentence. The commercial timing on the old shows isn't any better.
If Peacock can fix the timing on these ad breaks, that'd be great. I have no reason to believe they will, because it's ultimately going to be a way to try and extort people into buying the ad-free plan. Just be aware of that if you decide to go in on this.
The archives are a mess
The WWE Network wasn't perfect, but at least it was (mostly) easy to find their old shows. Peacock's interface is a complete mess, unfortunately.
If you're an old-school wrestling fan and you want to find an old show, you'll be dismayed to see that you won't be able to find anything by year. No, because it's Peacock, they're dividing everything by "Season," which makes no sense. Granted, you can find Wrestlemanias easy enough. "Season 3" will mean "Wrestlemania III." But good luck finding a Summerslam or a Royal Rumble from the year you're looking for, because "Royal Rumble: Season 12" or "Summerslam: Season 17" isn't going to be any kind of help to you.
Don't think you can get around this by typing a show and the year in the Search bar, either. That's not going to work. You're just going to have to dig hard for whatever you're looking for. And God help you if you're looking through a PPV that they only run every other year, because that's just going to confuse you more.
The switch to Peacock is annoying in a lot of ways, but I can't complain too much, since it also helps justify Peacock's existence for me. Lord knows I wasn't watching anything on it before. Maybe I'll finally get around to watching the Saved By the Bell reboot while I'm here. Whether you actually want to shell out money for Peacock yourself depends on how big a wrestling fan you are or how much you're into The Office. Your mileage may vary.
