Quibi, the newest streaming media service on the block officially launched yesterday. Although the ultimate judgement will be determined in the marketplace, it doesn’t mean that we can’t identify a few immediately defining characteristics. Who better deserves a “quick take” than the long-gestating Quibi – short for “quick bites” – launched with the largest pool of start-up capital in the history of media?
For those less immersed in the streaming world, Quibi is the brainchild of former Disney legend and DreamWorks founder Jeffrey Katzenberg, in partnership with Meg Whitman, the billionaire former CEO of eBay and Hewlett Packard. The company formed in August 2018, announced its name that October, and its $1.8 billion of funding includes media industry giants such as The Walt Disney Company, Warner Media, NBCUniversal, Sony Pictures, ViacomCBS and Alibaba Group. From the beginning it has focused on its mission on providing short-form videos (less than 10 minutes-long) solely on mobile phones. Quibi’s pricing looks like a less-expensive Hulu, with a basic, ad-supported option at $4.99 per month and an ad-free version at $7.99. It is smartly kicking off with a 90-day free trial.
All of one day in now, what does a dive deep into the Quibi content pool tell us?
Truth in advertising
Quibi is what it says it is – “Short Videos. Long on Stars.” They aren’t trying to be anything else. The videos are a maximum of 10 minutes. Every video that is part of a longer form story is supposed to end with a “cliffhanger” but often that isn’t a lot more suspense than you might get before a commercial break in linear TV. But they are definitely short.
The list of stars right out of the box is collectively as impressive as any you’d see assembled in a broadcast or cable TV network environment. There’s Liam Hemsworth, Christoph Waltz, Sophie Turner, Chance the Rapper, Will Arnett, Will Forte, Jennifer Lopez, Chrissy Teigen, LeBron James, and Titus Burgess. But you don’t see something that matches the pizzazz of the top shows on HBO, Hulu, Amazon Prime or the best of Netflix. I get that it’s super early, but don’t come here expecting to find the equivalent of Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon or Steve Carell in AppleTV+’s The Morning Show, never mind The Mandalorian.
Quality and budget are in evidence, originality less so
Quibi had a seemingly unavoidable launch day glitch, similar to Disney+, by going down for an hour. But the app itself is sleek and its user experience intuitive for anyone accustomed to most streaming apps. The programming that I saw is slickly produced with money obviously spent for on-camera talent, locations, and impressive sets where appropriate. The “cheapest” show I watched was probably Memory Hole starring Will Arnett, but its green screen and old archival footage fit perfectly with the clever, snarky commentary.
One surprising element of the content was how unsurprising it seemed. With nearly two years of development time, and with a self-conscious focus on “short form,” I expected to see novel genres or narrative approaches befitting the pre-launch ballyhoo. But most everything I watched, while certainly well produced, seemed just a bit too familiar. Chrissy’s Court adds “Judge Honorable” Chrissy Teigen to pretty standard People’s Court arguments, and the show’s musical theme even seems to sample the music from that show (hopefully this was appropriately lawyered). At three episodes in, Sophie Turner’s starrer Survive feels like someone pitched a mix of Girl Interrupted, Castaway and Lost. Most Dangerous Game with Hemsworth and Waltz conjures up The Game with Michael Douglas and The Hunt, the human hunting controversial film that just had its theatrical run short-circuited. Quibi even has a documentary about big cats called Fierce Queens! A little Tiger King envy perhaps? And I’m not even counting Punk’d, which initially premiered on MTV in 2003 with Ashton Kutcher.
Even the “shortness” of the content feels gimmicky rather than innovative. Other than Arnett’s show, whose 4 minutes represented a self-contained “program”, most of the other programs are of a more traditional linear or streaming TV length. The breaks often seemed designed to demonstrate the business model rather than story-telling needs.
Why isn’t this on Connected TV?
Even as little as two years ago, mobile video felt far more central to the future of TV than it does today, so Quibi’s focus there seemed to make sense. But today, with so much investment and media industry firepower behind Connected TV services such as Disney+, HBO Max and Peacock, it feels strange that Quibi isn’t available on Connected TV devices like Roku or Apple TV. This has been cited early and often by critical consumers. So Quibi’s differentiator as a platform is that it is less accessible than the other streaming services, all of which are also available on your mobile phone? Wouldn’t you want to get everyone everywhere who might want to consume your content? COVID-19 and our newly shared stay at home lifestyle only reinforces the oddity of the decision now.
Digital advertising needs innovation everywhere but Quibi not (yet) supplying it
After such a long buildup to launch, and as a digital-only platform relying in part on advertising, you’d have expected Quibi to come out of the shoot with something to make the ad world go “wow” and the linear TV world to go “uh oh.” Nope. Instead, all I’ve seen are pre-rolls, around since the dawn of the digital video age. Even as you move from one short episode to the next, there is simply another pre-roll, with no context to the content you are watching. Perhaps as Quibi learns your viewing habits it will personalize the ad experience for now there is little to see here.
It’s a good thing Quibi is privately owned
I expect it will take a long time to see if Quibi will really work in its present form or if it morphs into something that looks more like “conventional” Connected TV. Without any pre-existing content library, Quibi is massively leveraging its future on being able to produce mountains of new content. Given its reported preference for leaving content ownership with the producers, Quibi won’t even be able to enjoy the greatest long-term benefits from its “hits,” thus relying even more on the combination of subscriber fees and advertising. There is a lot of talent at work here, so Quibi may well survive and even thrive over time. But for their sake they better hope their investors – many of whom are facing their own unprecedented challenges right now – are patient.
