Quibi blows 2 Billion...finally shutting down

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by PhilBorder, Oct 21, 2020.

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  1. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    I preferred them when they were called "blipverts" and caused people to explode.

     
    Last edited: Oct 22, 2020
  2. Deuce66

    Deuce66 Senior Member

    Location:
    Canada
    Quibi's co-founders explain what went wrong

    • Quibi’s co-founders Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman told CNBC that a convergence of factors led to the failure of the app.
    • Katzenberg said he anticipated easier adoption by consumers, and placed some blame on the Covid-19 pandemic.
    • Quibi raised nearly $2 billion in funding ahead of its launch in April, but couldn’t deliver on subscribers.

    Quibi’s co-founders Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman told CNBC on Thursday that a convergence of factors led to the failure of the short-form entertainment service for mobile phones.

    The company announced Wednesday that it would shut down just over six months after it launched.

    “We had a new product. We asked people to pay for it before they actually understood what it was. I think we thought there would be easier adoption by people to it,” Katzenberg said in an interview with Julia Boorstin. Katzenberg also pointed toward the Covid-19 pandemic affecting people’s travel.

    Quibi had intended for the app to appeal to a younger demographic who wanted content while on the go. But the app debuted just weeks after the Covid-19 pandemic hit the U.S. and hampered travel, meaning people weren’t commuting and turning to their phones for entertainment. At the same time, streaming competitors such as Netflix and Disney+ saw a surge in viewers.

    “Somewhere between the idea being less than perfect, which we own, and the environment we found ourselves in is where the fail has come. What each of those are in that equation, I’m not sure any of us are ever going to know. But it didn’t work,” Katzenberg said.

    Quibi, which cost $4.99 per month, originally projected it would have more than 7 million subscribers after its first year, but it only had about 500,000 subscribers as of a few weeks ago, CNBC reported.

    The company raised $1.75 billion in funding ahead of its launch, and investors included Disney, Comcast’s NBCUniversal, and AT&T’s WarnerMedia. Whitman said the company has at least $350 million in cash, but expects there will be “much more” to return to shareholders following its wind down.

    “It was clear that for whatever reason this was not going to be as successful as Jeffrey and I hoped,” Whitman said. “The honorable thing to do is return money to shareholders when we knew this was not going to have a path forward as a viable, stand alone business.”

    The co-founders will focus for the next few months on shutting down the business and selling assets.

    “For me, I’ve got to get on that horse and find the next mountain to charge up. It’s the only thing I know how to do and I’ve got a lot to prove,” Katzenberg said.

    Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC
     
    MikaelaArsenault likes this.
  3. Quibi had a version of The Most Dangerous game which I’d really like to see. Wonder if it - and their other productions - will land somewhere else.
     
  4. Mirrorblade.1

    Mirrorblade.1 Forum Resident

    Katzenberg, needs to retire and all his ill conceived ideas will go dreamworks is just shell now.
     
  5. Spencer R

    Spencer R Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oxford, MS
    I would think that, to launch any new Internet service, you need to offer a free tier and a paid tier. “Try Quibi for free: if you like it, upgrade to Quibi Premium for no ads and bonus shows.” Or whatever. But asking people to pay $4.99 a month off the bat for a new service probably isn’t a very good business model.
     
  6. kwadguy

    kwadguy Senior Member

    Location:
    Cambridge, MA
    Quibi seemed to fill a need that no one had.

    When it was announced, I thought it sounded utterly ridiculous. But I'm way out of their demographic. A few weeks after it launched, I asked my daughter if she'd like a free subscription to it (got an offer for one). Her answer was "what's Quibi?" This is someone in her early 20s who is fully immersed in social media/TicToc and all the rest. The fact that she didn't even know what Quibi was was all I needed to hear to know that it was going to crash and burn.

    $2B later, I guess everyone else figured it out, too.
     
  7. BeatleJWOL

    BeatleJWOL Senior Member

    I'm pretty sure the first ad I saw for Quibi was either on Youtube, or on Snapchat, which already has free original programming, formatted vertically for mobile, and not even any kind of subscription options.
     
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  8. PhilBorder

    PhilBorder Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Sheboygan, WI
  9. nosticker

    nosticker Forum Guy

    Location:
    Ringwood, NJ
    I'd like to have seen Marty Byrde talk the drug cartel into investing into Quibi on Ozark. Show over.


    Dan
     
  10. Spencer R

    Spencer R Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oxford, MS
    In fairness, YouTube does have a premium option, to which I subscribe primarily to get rid of the ads on the free version.
     
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  11. MikaelaArsenault

    MikaelaArsenault Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Hampshire
  12. DigMyGroove

    DigMyGroove Forum Resident

    I work in the industry and received a call checking in my availability from. Quibi show. The quoted hourly was ridiculously low, even as as IATSE union signatory work. I was so aghast at the quote I got in touch with my guild’s office to inquire how the rate could be legitimate.

    It turned out to be accurate, they had gotten a sweetheart “New Media” exemption from having to pay even the lowest normal prevailing rates.
     
  13. Mugrug12

    Mugrug12 The Jungle Is a Skyscraper

    Location:
    Massachusetts
    :hurl:
     
  14. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    No, that is not true: the mastering engineers and video editors had to do all the reframing manually. There was no automatic technology... and it was a huge pain in the ass. Multiple versions of each show/movie had to be prepared, each with different compositions, depending on what device on which it was being viewed. This created a lot of issues in post production, plus it limited the director's framing choices on the set.
     
    TheVU, JohnG, BeatleJWOL and 4 others like this.
  15. Hagstrom

    Hagstrom Please stop calling them vinyls.

    Everyone watches Toc Tik. That's the content everyone wants. Young girls dancing to bad music.
     
  16. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    I would have assumed they'd just be shooting with a 4k camera with a square marker in the middle, and a cross in the middle of that with horizontal and vertical 16x9 frames.

    Seemed like a stupid idea from the very beginning, but then again they never asked me.

    I didn't mean to say that the re-framing was automatic on the creators side, but that it did so transparently for the viewer.
     
  17. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    I have an idea...

    How about the exact same thing except having the young girls dance to good music?
     
  18. Holerbot6000

    Holerbot6000 Forum Resident

    Location:
    California
    The music on Instagram isn't much better but at least the young girls get to wear skimpy bikini's. I think they call them 'Influencers'.
     
    Chris DeVoe likes this.
  19. BeatleJWOL

    BeatleJWOL Senior Member

  20. Mirrorblade.1

    Mirrorblade.1 Forum Resident

    My friend told me about this.. I rolled my eyes .. welcome the 21 century everybody wants and needs attention...
    and product placement.. At times this worse than running man future.. it's pretty close though.
    As for Katzenberg, we hit the wall.. what else can they do which most will ignore.
     
  21. MikaelaArsenault

    MikaelaArsenault Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Hampshire
  22. Hagstrom

    Hagstrom Please stop calling them vinyls.

    I did see one girl dance to Paint It Black but that was it.
     
  23. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
  24. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    It's not a unique process, and many movies have been reframed for different formats over the past 50-60 years. Hell, we've been pan/scanning widescreen movies for TV since the 1950s. This is just another variation of the same thing. You can't optimize telling a story in two different formats at the same time. For one reason, the actors would be different distances away from each other. It also changes the edit in some ways. It's a messy way to shoot a movie, no matter how big the frame.
     
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  25. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    Well, that's obviously not what everybody wants. Neither young girls dancing to bad music, or young girls badly dancing to music.
    Look at your own avatar. It's just young bad girls.

    Not that there's anything wrong with that...
     
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