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Media Businesses

'Quit Trying To Make Quibi Happen' (engadget.com) 66

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Devindra Hardawar of Engadget, writing about Quibi, a new streaming service that launched today: Nobody asked for Quibi. Nobody, that is, except for Jeffrey Katzenberg, the founder of Dreamworks Pictures and famed Hollywood producer. Where other mobile video startups failed, like Samsung's long-forgotten Milk Video and Verizon's own Go90 (RIP), Katzenberg figured he could succeed by pouring money (somehow he's raised $1.75 billion so far!) into top talent and well produced shows. At CES in January, Quibi also revealed its core innovation, Turnstyle, which allows you to seamlessly switch between portrait and vertical video playback modes. I was intrigued by that technology at the time. The company's chief product officer, Tom Conrad, the former CTO of Pandora and Snapchat product VP, also seemed excited about its potential. Still, it was hard to truly judge Quibi until I got a look at some of its shows. And after spending a few days with the app, which launches today, I can't say I'm impressed. Sure, Katzenberg and crew managed to bring some professional-looking "quick bites" of entertainment to phones, but the shows I've seen aren't nearly as compelling as anything on Netflix or Hulu. And their slick production values makes it harder to connect with Quibi shows than your favorite YouTube personality.

Why, exactly, would anyone want to pay $5 a month (it's also launching with a 90-day free trial) for this stuff -- especially when you still have to deal with ads and can't even watch it on other screens? Quibi CEO Meg Whitman had an answer for me at CES, though it's not entirely convincing: "We think we're a third category of this on-the-go viewing opportunity that people will make room for in their entertainment budget, because it's going to be great content for a mobile use-case." But that logic is difficult to follow after watching several episodes of Dishmantled, a cooking show hosted by Titus Burgess that's part hyper-accelerated Chopped, part voyeuristically punishing Japanese gameshow. In every 5 minute episode, chefs are blindfolded and assaulted by an exploding mystery dish. Their goal: To eat the disgusting remnants from the floor and walls to figure out what that dish actually is, and cook it within 30 minutes. It feels more like a parody cooking show from 30 Rock, than something on a legitimate network.
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'Quit Trying To Make Quibi Happen' More

'Quit Trying To Make Quibi Happen'

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  • So you're saying that the video is zoomed either way you look at it,

    So if I can get the real video file they're probably best viewed on say, old SD screen? Could I possibly bring my Mitsubishi Diamondtron I can't seem to give away out of the garage and make it useful again with this content - if I can manage to get the real video files that is?

    • Quibi also revealed its core innovation, Turnstyle, which allows you to seamlessly switch between portrait and vertical video playback modes

      So its core innovation was rotating your display 90 degrees? I guess it's par for the course for a Meg Whitman-run company...

      • This Quibi is... (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        This Quibi is so fetch.

      • So its core innovation was rotating your display

        Um, no.

        Their core innovation is NOT rotating your display. You can't really expect people to do that, not on a paid-for service.

  • Subscription and ads are over (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dracolytch ( 714699 ) on Monday April 06, 2020 @10:14AM (#59913268) Homepage

    I will never pay to watch ads again. Networks can show me ads for content, or I am willing to pay for content if I'm interested in it enough.

    I'm fine if there's a free tier which has ads, and a paid tier which does not (YouTube / DuoLingo / Pandora).

    If I'm paying money, then there had best be no ads. My time is too valuable, and there is more interesting content available to me than I'll ever be able to consume.

    ~D

    • I have no problem paying for a service that shows ads. The price I pay for the service is what matters to me. I'm currently paying $1.99/month for Hulu with ads (12-month Black Friday deal). I paid $0.99/month for Hulu with ads for all of 2019 (12-month Black Friday deal).

      But to pay $4.99/month to watch short 10-minute clips with ads? Pass.

      I'd rather pay $2 more a month and get Disney Plus with no ads ($0.8425 more a month if you pay for the full year up front).

      • I'm not sure why people are offended by ads+subscriptions.

        Newspapers always did this.

        Sure, there were also small free local papers, but those were never as good as the paid subscriptions with hundreds of sheets of ads every Sunday.

        • Re:Newspapers always had subscription+ads (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Gavrielkay ( 1819320 ) on Monday April 06, 2020 @01:21PM (#59914014)
          Newspaper ads didn't pop over other content and blare sound at you. Nor did they make you wait until they'd completed a video loop before you could move past it to what you wanted to read. The advertising industry shot themselves in the collective feet by making ads so obnoxious and invasive that the only possible response is to avoid them at all costs.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by g01d4 ( 888748 )

            ads so obnoxious and invasive

            I'm not clear either why the ad industry hasn't caught on or why at least some host sites haven't insisted that advertisers clean up their act. Things must be working good enough with ad-blockers pacifying the more restive of the hoi polloi. I occasionally get the please-disable-your-ad-blocker notice with of course no ability to reply please-disable-your-annoying-ads.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by cusco ( 717999 )

              Market research shows that the more annoying the ad the more likely viewers are to remember it, that's been the case since the 1970s. For the advertising industry market research is the equivalent to the Koran or the Bible for fundy preachers, the direct word of god.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by dwywit ( 1109409 )

                They overlooked the possibility that being remembered for being obnoxious is frequently counter-productive.

                "It's better to be remembered than forgotten". True, I suppose, but if you show me an obnoxious ad, I will not buy your product.

          • Not only that, but newspaper ads never had the potential to crash your newspaper deliveries and prevent you from reading the paper until you got in touch with paper support and got it fixed.

            Also, newspaper ads stuck around as long as the paper and got on to microfilm. Then, 100 years later you could look at really interesting period ads. They're primary sources for historians. A lot of that is gone. We're going to have a huge hole in the history of commercial activity, marketing, etc.

      • I paid $0.99/month for Hulu

        News flash: You way overpaid for that garbage service.

        I tried Hulu, it's the only service I am pretty sure I would not use even if it were free with no ads...

        And I subscribe to Acorn.

  • Bad timing (Score:5, Funny)

    by Gilgaron ( 575091 ) on Monday April 06, 2020 @10:14AM (#59913272)
    This "on the go" viewing sounds like it could've had a better chance at market before everyone was stuck at home.

  • lol, annother Meg Whitman fart (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hatman9 ( 6732920 ) on Monday April 06, 2020 @10:25AM (#59913302)
    she screwed it up when she ran ebay, she screwed up when she ran HP. why do people keep giving her work?

    • Re:lol, annother Meg Whitman fart (Score:5, Insightful)

      by BenJeremy ( 181303 ) on Monday April 06, 2020 @10:32AM (#59913332)

      So much this.

      She drove me to looking for another employer after 21 years with EDS/HP/HPE with her nonsense. She back-stabbed her way to HP's CEO position and tanked the whole thing, leaving 100,000+ families in ruins in the process. Not at your desk? You get a sticky note to see her in her office for dismissal, assuming you still had a job after one of her layoff jags.

      I hope any enterprise she worms herself into dies a quick death before she can wield her power of stupid over any more people.

      • I should add, I left on my own terms.

      • I hear this from multiple first-hand sources as well... to the point where I'm forced to seriously consider the possibility that she's not just stupid but actually actively evil.

      • I believe it was Bloomberg that rated Meg as the "most underachieving CEO" while she was at HP. Yet another company to ravage...though it doesn't look like this one will even achieve escape velocity and will just come crashing back down to Earth after burning through investors' capital. Nobody is going to pay for this.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by mvdwege ( 243851 )

      Look at the quote in the summary:

      "We think we're a third category of this on-the-go viewing opportunity that people will make room for in their entertainment budget, because it's going to be great content for a mobile use-case."

      That's completely empty, vapid MBA-speak. The fact that people actually think that this kind of disdain for reality is acceptable tells you all you need to know about modern business culture.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by marcle ( 1575627 )

      she screwed it up when she ran ebay, she screwed up when she ran HP. why do people keep giving her work?

      Clearly the big idea here is name recognition and star power. Totally uninteresting to me, but judging by the current state of social media, this might actually have some traction. (But I doubt it. Rich famous people can be dumb, news at 11.)

    • she screwed it up when she ran ebay

      Did she really screw up eBay? Honest question. I mean, it survived through the dot com bubble burst and she grew the business (In 2001, eBay had the largest userbase of any e-commerce site) and expanded it beyond mainly collectibles. She had the foresight to buy PayPal to make transactions easier and safer.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Pedigree.

      Upward social mobility is a problem people justifiably worry about. High(er) social mobility is what built the US, and to a great extent, Europe. Now the US has one of the lower social mobility rankings in the G20.

      A related, and probably bigger problem, is the lack of downward mobility. Once you're in the "elite" it's pretty hard to fall out. Whitman keeps getting put in charge of things because she's someone people in power recognize.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        This, and that CEOs get to give away board positions to supporters, who then approve the salaries for CEOs. I'm sure she was owed mega-favors for cluing buddies in the financial industry when to dump HP/eBay/etc. stock as well. Insider trading is far more common than people think.

    • Maybe she can suck the chrome off a trailer hitch?

      Sexual references aside, it's probably that businesses are either so woke, or desperate to appear so, that any woman with a trace of qualifications is immediately hired and deployed no awkward questions asked.

      "People! We need a vagina in that seat, STAT!

  • Sure this will work! I mean, how can a "hip" and "trendy" mobile video service that has an average age of 66 between the founder / lead investor and CEO NOT work. Come on people!
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • "Do NOT even think about trying the 90-day free trial of this app, you will absolutely HATE it's slick production, smooth features, and absurd content! Don't you dare!" /s

    Super obvious slashvertisement.

    Also, apparently anonymous comments are not allowed anymore? wtf?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Myrdos ( 5031049 )

      Thinking the same thing. Also, this:

      At CES in January, Quibi also revealed its core innovation, Turnstyle, which allows you to seamlessly switch between portrait and vertical video playback modes.

      Does it involve rotating the device ninety degrees?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Pascoea ( 968200 )
        This part actually seems technically interesting to me. If you think about it, having a tech that allows full-screen portrait mode (actual full screen, not black-bared) and landscape, where the content has to adjust to the available real-estate? Think about a scene in a show where things are happening on two different sides of a frame. That works just fine in landscape, but how do you handle it in portrait? Is the scene shot in such a way that you can make both a portrait and landscape "cut" of it, and
        • so instead of black bars in portrait mode there is useless content that means nothing to the story? Because that's all that would mean. If you look at it the other way...you've shot a portrait video and when you turn it landscape you're just zooming in to the middle of the middle of the portrait video to fit the aspect ratio, it doesn't really seem as cool does it? In fact it seems like a damn pain in the ass to do and not accidentally cut something important.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Pascoea ( 968200 )
            Or what if you shot it in landscape mode and in portrait mode they had some "magic" that panned and zoomed to the important part of the scene?

    • Also, apparently anonymous comments are not allowed anymore? wtf?

      They turn them off for brief periods when the trolls get to be too much. They will get turned back on.

  • Quibi (Score:3)

    by ArhcAngel ( 247594 ) on Monday April 06, 2020 @11:15AM (#59913486)
    Quibi is the Michael Bloomberg of video streaming. Quibi is short and throwing obscene amounts of cash at advertising demanding attention.

  • Katzenberg seems to have an obsession with short form video. He tried this before and it failed, Pop!, then Awesomeness.TV.
    He seems to think his success at making traditional movies will convert to short formats with high production value. These short shows are not Hemingway writing the worlds shortest novel "For sale, used baby shoes. Never worn." and never will be, so the production value is lost.
    He could hire people from YouTube and offer better production standards, but relying on the same creative pool

  • Given all the $$ that seems to have been thrown at this product, I really think they should ask their marketing people for a refund. Mainly because "Quibi" is almost the same pronunciation to the already existing "Cubii" - a mini-elliptical exercise machine.

  • That's backlogged and I only have Netflix. Who the hell has time for all this crap? Who actually has a spare "entertainment budget"?

    Personally I'm in entertainment debt.

  • In 2007 Sony edited down TV episodes to 4-6 minute length. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • Legends of the Hidden Temple remake Sounds cool but to cram it into 10 mins max??

  • Your arguments work even better against Apple TV+. So... good luck with that.

  • Concept has been tried and failed. See DEN

    Webisodes nobody wanted
    Short clips intended to appear to Gen ___
    Run by idiots

    Company imploded and there is a great cartoon about it somewhere.

    Rinse Lather Repeat

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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