Table of Contents Show
Quibi has always fascinated me and what it means. (( “Quibi – Quick Bites. Big Stories.” 2020. Quibi – Quick Bites. Big Stories. 2020. )). Although I did not enjoy the app, it was worthwhile to try it for a short period of time. I discussed the app in the past. However, I believe that the app’s unfortunate demise was due to the generation gap: non-millennials venturing to make money from millennials. Since creators and founders were so distant from the generation, they imagined “short” films that represented seasons and episodes, but they were only ten minutes each. What sounded great on paper wasn’t so impressive when delivered.
Recall that the longest episode on television is approximately 40 minutes long, and the shortest is 25 minutes long. Therefore, two to three episodes could be considered one full episode if they were 20-25 minutes long. The concept was poorly crafted, as many misunderstood not the concept of ‘quick bites,’ but the content attached to it. The app employed ‘reputable’ actors to market their app, which is good, but the vast majority of the shows were substandard in execution.
Therefore, this sparked the recurrent question: Why would a company hire reputable actors if the content is deplorable? Wouldn’t it be easier to hire anyone who wants to participate and offer great content? In fact, it would, but that’s not the Quibi way, and that’s a factor that would ultimately lead to its downfall. So, let’s begin by asking where exactly did Quibi originate? What is its history? How did it end, and most importantly, where do we go from here?
The Background Of ‘Quick Bites’
Well, the name means “Quick Bites, Big Stories.” To clarify further, “Qui” is for “Quick” and “bi” is for “Bites or Big Stories.” As noted by Vulture, “The company hired a brand-strategy firm, Siegel+Gale, which helped come up with the name Quibi — short for “quick bites.” (( Ivie, Devon. 2020. “Quibi’s Original Name Was Somehow Worse.” Vulture. June 15, 2020. )). The name has been criticized in the past for its denseness. Even when you Google the name, “Quibi stupid name” appears as one of the top searches. Quibi isn’t perfect, but I find its name clever enough for me. If you take a look at the team on their website, no one actually belongs to the millennial generation.
If they do, it’s outside my scope due to the fact that they all have somewhat grey hair and older features. There is also only one person of color on the entire crew aside from another minority from what it appears to be. Minorities are not required on every team, but they usually contribute to the development of narratives that focus on black subjects, and a greater number of them are needed for that since each would have a different perspective on the matter. With so few minorities and a team that’s older than the generation, what could Quibi bring?
Part I: The Founding Of Quibi
Quibi was founded in August 2018 as/under NewTV by Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman. (( Spangler, Todd. 2018. “Jeffrey Katzenberg’s NewTV Closes $1B, Major Studios among Investors.” Variety. August 7, 2018. )). In October of that year, the app was renamed Quibi. The app started out as a campaign to appeal to a “younger audience.” It was expected to produce ten-minute episodes of “Quick Bites” as its name suggests, and that concept alone would attract millions of viewers. Unfortunately, that did not materialize as they feared. Quibi’s failure to appeal to younger audiences was inevitable from the outset.
The Guardian reports that: “In 2018, Quibi raised $1 billion in funding from major Hollywood film studios, TV companies, telecommunications companies, technology companies, banks, and other investors including The Walt Disney Company, 21st Century Fox, NBCUniversal, Sony Pictures, Time Warner, Viacom, eOne, Lionsgate, MGM, Madrone Capital, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Alibaba Group, Liberty Global and ITV” (( Sweney, Mark. 2018. “ITV Joins Hollywood Giants to Back Video Streaming Service for Mobiles.” The Guardian. August 7, 2018. )). If you want a platform to supersede, you need to raise money, but if you raise a million dollars, it mostly goes to paying reputable actors to convince millennials to care about the platform. At least from what it seems.
It seemed unfortunate to begin Quibi with this high amount of money that will be spent on a platform before it releases when it already offers paid tiers — meaning they would earn even more money by charging people once the trial period ends. They would make more money instead of losing it because much of the backburner expenses are sponsored.
The Tomorrow For Quibi Looks Promising?
In 2019, however, they announced their launch in April of 2020 (which seems like a long time ago). They also announced that there would be two tiers of subscriptions, both paid, if I recall correctly, advertising and no advertising, or something similar to what is seen with streaming services like Hulu, Peacock, etc. (( Alexander, Julia. 2020. “Quibi Is Flailing Because No One at Quibi Understands What Quibi Is.” The Verge. July 7, 2020. )). That same year, BBC Studios invested in Quibi, which was a huge deal; by the end of the same year, Quibi was selling its advertising space on its platform. Ad space profited approximately $150 million even before the app launched in April 2020. (( Perez, Sarah. “Streaming Service Quibi Sells out of Its $150M in First-Year Ad Inventory.” TechCrunch. October 23, 2019. )).
Again, it is understandable that an app must generate some income before launching in order to stay operational. Still, it seemed rather weird to fund such a large amount of financial resources before the app had even been released. Although I am unaware of how this works behind the scenes, it appears that they are unwilling to include any of their personal money in the event that the venture fails. Quibi, especially in this market, was an unproven app. It appeared that they were betting that Quibi would deliver but were actually worried that it might not. It is possible that the creators of Quibi knew more than they let on.
Quibi, nevertheless, would go on to partner with more companies between its official release, and by April 6th, 2020, the company was launching in the United States and Canada. The app was promising at the onset, with some intriguing series and engaging directing. The app is adroit in that it works in both landscape and portrait modes (albeit, almost no one uses portrait mode aside from selfies or pictures, but, apparently, Quibi knows people who use portrait view for streaming). This resulted in 300,000 downloads within its first day, along with ranking third in the App Store. (( Perez, Sarah. 2020. “Quibi Gains 300K Launch Day Downloads, Hits No. 3 on App Store.” TechCrunch. TechCrunch. April 7, 2020. )).
On April 14th, however, the number of downloads totaled 1.7 million, making the app the 11th most downloaded app on Google Play. Given those statistics, one can only hope for a hopeful outcome. But that did not say much since millennials download apps just for fun. When an app releases, people will download it simply because it is available and sponsored on the front page; this was promising for Quibi, though it did not tell much about its growth, development, and status. It also raised another question: How long can you sustain this hype once it is reached? There should have been content, tweets, and gifs being posted right before the release. Something that would have made the hype more relevant for millennials. But they didn’t have much of that.
The Moment When Quibi’s Momentum Starts Dwindling
In the second week, Quibi dropped out of the 50 most downloaded free apps in the US. By the beginning of May, it was ranked 125th. It was claimed by Quibi that 3.5 million users had installed the app. However, the real figure is closer to 2.9. (( “Jeffrey Katzenberg Blames Pandemic for Quibi’s Rough Start.” The New York Times, 2021. )). Taking into account the previous figures, only 1.3 million actually used the platform and remained active, which isn’t too generous considering how many times it’s been downloaded. Though those numbers for most companies seemed quite normal for a new app, Katzenberg said that it was “not where he wanted it to be” and blamed COVID-19 for it. (( “Jeffrey Katzenberg Blames Pandemic for Quibi’s Rough Start.” The New York Times, 2021. )). But, on the contrary, COVID-19 would have been the primary reason the platform was popular as we were all quarantined during this time.
We had no other reason not to use the app because it was the very first month we had a quarantine as a nation. Whitman was more positive about the launch of the app, but it was clear that it was merely intended to be instantly successful. I don’t think there was much consideration behind the scenes, they just wanted capital out of it, essentially banking on millennials to make them wealthy.
The Hiccups With Quibi
During this period, they were criticized for a few strange aspects of the app. One of the limitations was that you couldn’t screenshot anything on the app. (( Alexander, Julia. 2020. “It’s Impossible to Screenshot a Quibi Show, and That’s Detrimental to Its Success.” The Verge. April 8, 2020. )). They bought or paid for a service so that viewers couldn’t share or take part in the shows unless they used Quibi. It was very technology prison-like as if they don’t want users to discuss their platform on social media, though social media is where many users share it and where many of their users are.
It is also a way to utilize word-of-mouth, which is another way to market because they are outside the generation. Millennials can then share with others without having to do it themselves, i.e. free marketing. Another was that when you shot in portrait mode, it would cut off a lot of important parts. It wasn’t as seamless as the creators intended, resulting in only being able to watch the shot in landscape. Thirdly, the app was not castable.
Yes, in a streaming world an app was not castable. Therefore, they made adjustments so that content could be shared on social media on top of being viewed on televisions through casting. The app also developed its own screengrab function as a result of complaints about not being able to screen capture at all. But overall, it appears they listened to viewers. It appears they wanted to be part of what the millennials wanted from the platform. At least at this stage.
Yet, by the beginning of June, they had reduced pay. Although the platform creators said they were still committed, they portrayed it as if they wanted to reduce their salary by 10% because it was the right thing to do. (Which no one has ever said in their life, ever.) (( Nathan, Sara. 2020. “Quibi Staffers Seethe at Reese Witherspoon’s $6M Payday amid Layoffs.” Page Six. Page Six. June 3, 2020. )). In the aftermath of this, they reduced their staff, they were no longer in the top 1,000 and they were reported to have a total of 2 million subscribers when they had banked 7 million by this time. During the first few months of the year, they raised an additional $750 million in revenue. However, the money accounted for only eight percent of subscribers. (( Statt, Nick. 2020. “Quibi Reportedly Lost 90 Percent of Early Users after Their Free Trials Expired.” The Verge. The Verge. July 8, 2020. )). Additionally, 27% of the 90-day trial users converted to paying customers, while Quibi declines this, it does not come close to 50% of its users. 27% is a very low number when you actually want to make money from your app and keep it consistently going forward.
Part II: What Does Quibi’s Content Look Like?
Now, the content on Quibi is a significant reason for the platform’s collapse. Yes, ten minutes is very short when we can watch 40-minute episodes on our smartphones and tablets easily. However, Quibi’s series’ lacked the kind of acting that could enable someone to remain interested for even ten minutes. The best series on the platform was When the Street Lights Go On (2020, Rebecca Thomas). (( “A double homicide rattles the lives of a group of teenagers who struggle to find a sense of normalcy while coming of age in the midst of a murder investigation.” )).
Quibi spent over a billion dollars on original content in its first year, with 8,500 short-form episodes and 175 shows. Viewer devices could be set between ratios that allowed users to switch between the 16:9 and the 9:16 formats in the same video. Although Quibi attempted to commission a few shows related to politics, they had very little interest due to the fact that the platform specializes in humor and therefore politics would not be the right fit. Quibi, however, was nominated for ten Emmys in July 2020.
The Quibi ‘Millennial’ Drama Content
In reality, most of the actors appeared to be either having little or no fun or appearing to be there to earn a living. I just can’t imagine that Liam Hemsworth would agree to be in a Sunny of Philadelphia crossover (in which they hunt “humans” like Cricket) as an entire miniseries. (( “Mac and Dennis: Manhunters.” It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Wiki, 2013. Season 4, Episode 1. September 18, 2008 )). When you looked beyond the surface of the content, none of it made any sense. Because of this, a few months later, the free trial period (which the longest was around 14-90 days and some got it free for a whole year) left a huge hole in the app, so they tried to make shows that captured every spirit of millennials, but they had no success. (( Clark, Travis. “How to Get Quibi for Free: 90-Day Trial, T-Mobile Deal.” Business Insider. April 6, 2020. )). (( Webb, Kevin. “Quibi 14-day Free Trial: How To Download The App And Sign Up.” Business Insider. August 24, 2020. )).
Another series on the platform was a millennial stick in the wilderness with a phone… where no one would pick him up. With a phone, where he could easily call the police. It seems out of place to have a man stuck in his car, in the snow, making videos on his phone in a pandemic but also in general. Watch The Lodge from 2019 instead. The ideas are quite bogus and not as entertaining. If he is able to record videos and FaceTime, he can call the police, right?
The plot is also absurd: “A self-obsessed college student becomes stranded in the Colorado mountains and is left with only his smartphone for survival.” (( Wikipedia Contributors. “Wireless (TV Series).” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, January 25, 2021. )). The idea is relatively unsatisfying and can be easily closed by a police call. I have not seen the show, but based on the trailer there doesn’t seem to be much else. As of four months ago, a YouTube commenter by the name of Yaki Soba stated,
“This dude is freezing to death and his girlfriend won’t talk to him, his friend decides he’s going to enjoy the party instead of saving him and he would rather die than tell his mom he crashed the car. My life as a high school student in a nutshell.”
(( Quibi. “Wireless | Official Trailer | Quibi.” YouTube Video. YouTube, September 2, 2020. )).
This is a great summary of the series’ trailer. It can be said that Quibi’s a theme in itself. Most of its shows are entertaining, but they aren’t executed in a way to greatly hold millennials’ attention. Our society is a binge culture, to binge for 10 minutes each again and again can become monotonous and extremely boring. While they are so out-of-the-box that some might enjoy watching them, watching cliffhanger after cliffhanger for 10 minutes turns into a laborious chore. You become impervious to them. Some of the content was high-grade, but not half, which is why it did not find success.
The Quibi Scripted Shows Are Kind Of Meh
There were a few shows on the platform that are so scripted, they just didn’t work. A few of them being, Murder House Flip, Punk’d, Chrissy’s Court, amongst many other game show narratives. Many of them are popular because they feature celebrities or big-name rappers. There is a series with Offset from Migos, Skrrt With Offset, which is a car show. Mostly, unnecessary content is the best to describe it. At the end of the day, no one cares how famous an actor is when they watch something, they care about whether it is good or not.
Just because Liam Hemsworth stars in Most Dangerous Game, does not mean we will continue watching it because of him. Many of Chrissy’s Court‘s episodes are acted negligently and scripted. It was assumed that millennials would watch this show, but the demographic watching it is not the 25-28-year-old millennials, at the very least. Despite the fact that it wasn’t a good idea to write scripted shows, so many of them exist on the platform, which makes it clear that the wrong people were working for the wrong app. Now, yes, The Bachelor is attractive but think about what style of show that is.
Millennials need to be hired to appeal to the demographic, even social media platforms such as Netflix, Hulu, Wendy’s, need to provide that millennial content in tweets and stories in order to captivate their audience. It all comes down to how you relate to the demographic. It seems like Quibi wanted to focus on money; how much money can we bank from a fictitious idea. And… evidently, that is a whole lot.
What Was The Reception Of Quibi?
I do not know anyone in the millennial generation who likes Quibi. It is either a viral meme or a big joke because the platform does not understand how to appeal to millennials. This being said, most reviews of the app are mixed to negative. The majority of the original programming has been well-received, but the service as a whole has been criticized because it has a paid, mobile-only focus that limits accessibility and reach for the demographic it is trying to gain. Almost the exact same concept as YouTube and TikTok, both free platforms.
The Wall Street Journal put it very well,
“[they] suggested other reasons for the service’s shutdown include a misjudgment on which programming and technology features would appeal to young consumers and a high spend on advertising.”
(( Mullin, Benjamin, and Lillian Rizzo. 2020. “Quibi Was Supposed to Revolutionize Hollywood. Here’s Why It Failed.” WSJ. The Wall Street Journal. November 2, 2020. )).
It was a misjudging of what millennials find entertaining as they chose not to inquire about the demographic they created the app for. The Quibi creators, unfortunately, did not comprehend millennials.
Part III: What Was The Real Cause Of Quibi’s Downfall?
In October 2020, six months after Quibi launched, the Wall Street Journal reported that Quibi was shutting down. That was confirmed later that day by the Quibi founders. (( Mullin, Benjamin, Joe Flint, and Maureen Farrell. 2020. “Quibi Is Shutting down Barely Six Months after Going Live.” WSJ. The Wall Street Journal. October 21, 2020. )). This was when people realized that they did not want to create a platform for the people; they wanted to create the platform to get “rich” from the people. The app, which could have been successful, failed because its creators didn’t understand the demographics they chose. The content became wearisome and colorless, and there was no real effort put into the design.
According to Katzenberg, Deadline Hollywood reports:
“There was no question that keeping us going was not going to have a different outcome, it was just going to spend a whole lot more money without any value to show for it. So, out of respect for these people that put up this extraordinary amount of capital to do it, that’s irresponsible and we both felt we shouldn’t do it.”
(( Patten, Dominic. 2020. “Quibi Shutdown: Jeffrey Katzenberg & Meg Whitman Exclu Q&a on Closing Up.” Deadline. October 21, 2020. )).
It appears they did not want to spend money to help the platform stay alive, instead, continued to rely on others’ resources to keep it alive. If you are not willing to put in your own time, the app will not succeed. Continuously blaming the COVID-19 pandemic, Quibi had approximately half a million subscribers at the time of this announcement. Sadly, the failure of Qibi was not due to COVID-19, but it did confirm just how far behind the times non-millennials are when it comes to technology. If anything, COVID-19 should have enabled this app to be widely used, but instead of accepting responsibility for the platform’s failure, they chose to blame the pandemic. The same phenomenon that made YouTube subscribers soar to new heights, but YouTube is both free and paid. According to Kathryn Foster in Imitation Intimacy In The World Of Online Content Creation And COVID-19, “In April 2020, YouTube reported that the site’s video viewing time was 32 billion minutes, more than double what it was in April 2019.” (( Foster, Kathryn. “Imitation Intimacy in the World of Online Content Creation and COVID-19” The Daily Fandom, January 27, 2021. )). This happened right around the time that Quibi was released, so COVID-19 does not seem to have anything to do with the collapse.
The Conclusion Of Quibi & The Transfer To Roku
The abrupt announcement left everything in turmoil, including original programming, pending shows, and upcoming ideas. Because Quibi did not own any rights to its programming, it has the ability to share it. But around December 1, the app itself was shut down. However, Roku purchased the app’s content for less than $100 million for its platform. As Roku acquires Quibi, they are now playing in a tough spot. Nearly every show on their platform is at best mediocre, so it is unclear how Roku will manage to save Quibi’s content or if it will just be a “free” set of series that you can watch on your own leisure.
Unfortunately, Roku is going to do what Quibi did, emphasizing the fact that “famous reputable” actors are featured and that the program was nominated for Emmys. But this only serves to reinforce the facts that led to Quibi’s failure (no one cares about those aspects if the content is not good):
“When launched later this year, you’ll be able to watch Emmy award-winning content produced by the most successful studios in the business. Programming will feature stars such as Idris Elba, Kevin Hart, Liam Hemsworth, Anna Kendrick, Nicole Richie, Chrissy Teigen, Lena Waithe, and others, will be available to you in just a few clicks.”
(( Roku. “Roku.” Roku, 2020. ))
Part IV: In Conclusion, If You Want To Appeal To Millennials, Then Appeal To Millennials
I personally got rid of the app after 90 days (in early 2020), but it was more marketing than actual entertainment for me. I was curious about it, but I found out it wasn’t what I wanted to try. Marketing is supposed to convince people to download it, but what the platform actually received was nothing like the marketing portrayed. I decided not to pay for it or download it again. I saw some trailers for Wireless, the last series on the app, and it looked so obtuse that I was offended they thought millennials would enjoy that type of content. I understand how people can, but for the demographic, it just does not seem to fit.
While the fact that Quibi was not made by millennials is considered the primary cause of its failure, the amount of cash it raised is the bigger problem. The shows weren’t terrible; they attracted some viewers who enjoyed the content, but because the app’s creators were so out of touch with the demographic they aimed to reach… it was never meant to succeed. It started with the ill-conceived concept of not allowing word-of-mouth. How can you promote your app if other people are not permitted to screenshot it?
Again, making it difficult to use word-of-mouth as most take and post pictures of funny moments on social media. Quibi was not a faulty idea, but it wasn’t well executed. The team believed it could ‘get rich’ by just creating a concept with no personal money invested. They assumed that millennials are easy to please without actually paying attention to what they like. They were wrong and realized this when they discovered that millennials are concerned with what they consume today. They care about the content and how it works, not just if it looks great with celebrities. A magnificent idea, delivered by the wrong people.
The ‘Future’ Of Streaming
The app’s concept is quite intriguing, maybe not ten-minute episodes, but it is certainly interesting for the future of streaming. Having users watch on a mobile device and be able to adjust the picture to it is a seemingly clever idea for the future of technology. The concept of 10-minute episodes is considerably enticing as well for those entertained. I thought it worked for the one show that it was intended for, but it failed other shows. This could also be attributed to the team that directed and wrote When The Streetlights Come On.
However, it does demonstrate that people want something that enhances their lives or satisfies their needs. Not bad content made by someone who wants to take advantage of a demographic. Many of the shows have star casts as a way to grab viewers, but they soon realize they are of substandard quality and lose interest. In Quibi Disaster: How To Lose $1.75b On Something You Don’t Understand, it is stated how much emphasis is on star-power:
“Quibi focused almost exclusively on star power on both sides of the camera, citing budgets of up to the US $100,000 per minute. These are extraordinary expenses in the short‐form market, which is otherwise largely driven by early‐mid career professionals and proto‐amateur creators, who are also arguably the leading experts in engaging audiences.”
(( Ellingsen, Steinar, Susan Elisabeth Turnbull, Joël Bassaget, Mark Ryan, Nicola Evans, Meredith Burkholder, Emilia King, Stuart Cunningham, Marion McCutcheon, and Guy Healy. “Quibi Disaster: How to Lose $1.75b on Something You Don’t Understand | QUT EPrints.” Qut.edu.au, November 10, 2020. https://doi.org/Creative Industries Faculty; School of Communication; School of Creative Practice; Digital Media Research Centre. ))
When you try to attract people with decent actors and then bring them to substandard material, it doesn’t keep them watching. The viewer would then become upset that they were being manipulated to watch something subpar.
Many things could have led to the downfall of Quibi, but hiring reputable actors was not the way to go. Hire good actors with diverse backgrounds, and people will watch, don’t just hire celebrities because of their influence and reach. Millennials are influencers, but… we don’t really pay attention to most of them. If you want to appeal to millennials, appeal to millennials, it really isn’t hard. We only like so many things, but don’t just half-ass it.