Quibi struggling to find buyer after rejection by Apple SVP Eddy Cue
Quibi founder Jeffrey Katzenberg is reportedly having a hard time finding a buyer for the struggling short-form video streaming service, after being rebuffed by Apple.
Credit: Apple
Short-form video streaming service Quibi is said to be exploring "strategic options," including the possibility of a sale, after failing to hit initial subscriber targets. Thus far, however, it has come up short.
According to The Information, Katzenberg has recently pitched the possibility of acquiring Quibi to several technology and entertainment companies. Some of the executives he approached include Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of internet software and services. Katzenberg was turned down.
Quibi was floated as a possible target of an Apple takeover earlier in 2020. Along with Apple, Katzenberg's pitch was also rejected by WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar and Facebook app chief Fidji Simo, The Information reported.
Part of the reason why buyers keep turning the service down is that it doesn't have much to offer. It only owns the content on its platform for a couple of years. That's because it initially enticed creators to make shows by including terms that they could license their programs to other services after two years.
The video service first launched in April, and sought to differentiate itself with a heavy focus on short-form and mobile-only streaming content.
Quibi planned to hit more than seven million subscribers by the end of its first year. Six months later, the streaming service has between 400,000 and 500,000 paying subscribers. Those numbers also include subscribers who got a free year of the service through a deal with T-Mobile.
Katzenberg may still have other options, including a sale to a company in the gaming industry or licensing Quibi shows to other services after converting them to full-length episodes. Although Quibi episodes are typically as short as five minutes, creators could stitch them together into full-length content for other platforms.
Credit: Apple
Short-form video streaming service Quibi is said to be exploring "strategic options," including the possibility of a sale, after failing to hit initial subscriber targets. Thus far, however, it has come up short.
According to The Information, Katzenberg has recently pitched the possibility of acquiring Quibi to several technology and entertainment companies. Some of the executives he approached include Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of internet software and services. Katzenberg was turned down.
Quibi was floated as a possible target of an Apple takeover earlier in 2020. Along with Apple, Katzenberg's pitch was also rejected by WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar and Facebook app chief Fidji Simo, The Information reported.
Part of the reason why buyers keep turning the service down is that it doesn't have much to offer. It only owns the content on its platform for a couple of years. That's because it initially enticed creators to make shows by including terms that they could license their programs to other services after two years.
The video service first launched in April, and sought to differentiate itself with a heavy focus on short-form and mobile-only streaming content.
Quibi planned to hit more than seven million subscribers by the end of its first year. Six months later, the streaming service has between 400,000 and 500,000 paying subscribers. Those numbers also include subscribers who got a free year of the service through a deal with T-Mobile.
Katzenberg may still have other options, including a sale to a company in the gaming industry or licensing Quibi shows to other services after converting them to full-length episodes. Although Quibi episodes are typically as short as five minutes, creators could stitch them together into full-length content for other platforms.
Comments
AFAIK, and as you referenced, Quibi only licensed its shows for 2 years, and I doubt they have the rights to combine them into full-length episodes during that time. But after 2 years, creators of those shows can, and almost certainly will do that. Not that it will do Quibi any good. They're toast.
They only licensed the shows for 2 years? I thought they were exclusive to Quibi forever. What a dumb decision!
It's innovative, exploits all the good of mobile and the shows are all original. Not too bad.
i think the concept of short videos was trendy rather than focusing on different interesting content. They literally just took full length movies and cut it up into 6
minute episodes.
Whether Quibi might have succeeded or not will never truly be known. What we can say is that a service designed from the ground up to offer high quality short-form content to people on the go on their mobile devices had the tragic misfortune of launching at the exact moment when people stopped going anywhere, locked down, and logged a record-breaking number of hours per day watching television on their big home screens. But, prior to the pandemic, if you looked at the data (which I'm guessing you have not) which revealed the crazy number of hours per day people were logging on their mobile screens, Quibi was anything but an "emperor has no clothes" kind of idea. Risky, yes, as bold ideas usually are, but it seemed like Katzenberg, a guy with an extraordinary track record of success in media, might have really been on to something. And, to answer your silly question that you ask with the visual acuity of 20/20 hindsight, other companies poured financial backing into Quibi because they believed Katzenberg was onto something, too. As it turns out, and perhaps to no one's surprise, not enough people locked at home during the worst pandemic in a century--and the worst unemployment since the Great Depression--want to pay extra money each month for a service that produces short-form content for their phones. One can debate whether the shows on Quibi were good enough to succeed, but I doubt that even the most critically acclaimed content ever made would have made a difference in this environment.
No, it’s not. Short clips you could only watch on mobile. There’s nothing innovative about that; that’s just a cutting-room-floor bad idea left over from successful good ideas.
Nope, it was still a very stupid idea, prior to the pandemic. People wrote about how stupid it was. Video content apps that already exist on mobile: YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video, HBO, etc etc... Nobody needed a mobile-only destination for short periods of video consumption. You can already do that on any of the apps. There is no value added in making it mobile only and short clips only. We already have mobile apps and the ability to stop viewing and hop off the bus.
Different alone doesn’t mean good.
And I’m genuinely curious (this is not a put down or knock) how many of Quibi’s defenders in this forum are also subscribers?