New data may show the reason Peacock canceled 'Brave New World' after just 1 season

• NBCUniversal's Peacock canceled "Brave New World" after one season this week.
• Audience-demand data from the research firm Parrot Analytics shows that the series peaked in popularity early and fell sharply after Peacock's July launch.
• At its peak in July, the series was in less demand than nearly a dozen of Peacock's more popular licensed shows like "Saturday Night Live" and "Parks and Recreation."

Peacock has canceled its flagship original series, "Brave New World," after one season.

The NBCUniversal streaming service, which launched in July after a soft launch for Comcast customers in April, didn't offer a reason for the abrupt cancellation. It did confirm to Business Insider that the show's production company, Universal Content Productions, is shopping the series around to other distributors.

But data provided to Business Insider by the research firm Parrot Analytics proposed potential reasons for the show's ax: it was lagging behind some of Peacock's licensed content in popularity and peaked in popularity early.

Parrot Analytics measures demand expressions, which reflect the desire, engagement, and viewership of a TV series weighted by importance. "Brave New World" peaked in audience demand on July 20, five days after Peacock's launch, according to Parrot Analytics. At the time, it was 17.1 times more in demand than the average TV series in the US, but it fell sharply in demand after that.

By this week, Peacock's animated original "Curious George" series was more in demand.

Even on its peak day, "Brave New World" was only the No. 12 most in-demand series on Peacock, according to Parrot Analytics. It was the top original, but as the below chart illustrates, it lagged behind Peacock's more popular licensed content, like "Saturday Night Live" (No. 1), "Parks and Recreation" (No. 6), and "This Is Us" (No. 11).

Peacock did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this data.

Peacock is unique compared to rival streaming services like Netflix, Disney Plus, or HBO Max in that it offers a free, ad-supported tier along with two premium, paid subscription tiers.

This could put less reliance on its original content whereas Netflix invests heavily in originals and just this week raised the price of its standard and premium plans.

The strategy seems to be working to sign up users. Comcast said on Thursday that Peacock as gained 22 million sign-ups, though didn't say how many of those were paying subscribers.

The service will gain another mega-popular licensed series next year with "The Office" after it leaves Netflix, where it's consistently been one of the streaming giant's most popular shows. It ranked No. 2 on Nielsen's top 10 streaming shows this week based on number of minutes watched.