Quibi was always a high-risk proposition. Exclusively dedicated to “quick bites” of entertainment, the streamer saw itself as the future. It was to where young adults weaned on YouTube and TikTok could graduate to when they were ready for more glossy, properly produced content. With the streaming marketplace growing more crowded with every passing month, the pressure was on Quibi to get it right out of the box. It didn’t: just a week after its April launch, the streamer dropped off the list of iPhone’s 50 most downloaded free apps in the United States. I think I speak for most of us when I say that I rarely see anyone mention Quibi on Twitter, and when they do, it’s mostly to express puzzlement at what exactly it is.
“I attribute everything that has gone wrong to coronavirus,” Quibi founder Jeffrey Katzenberg told the New York Times this week. “Everything. But we own it.”
It’s true that April 6, 2020—several weeks into America’s coronavirus lockdown—was a terrible time to launch anything new. But more established streamers saw their viewing numbers soar as people binged their way through catastrophe. Even Disney+, which landed just four months before Quibi, continues to increase its subscribers, announcing 54.5 million as of May. Disney+ has a massive advantage, of course: it started with a huge backlist of fan favorites and a brand embedded in every American’s brain. But Katzenberg, as former Disney chief, surely knew that in lieu of that familiar content and brand recognition, Quibi had to come at the world with more than a clever concept. Apple’s recent bumpy birth should have been a warning flag that it’s not easy to create a streamer from scratch, even with big names on board and $1.8 billion in startup funds.
So, why doesn’t Quibi work?
1. Too Many Rules
Designed exclusively for iPhones and Androids, Quibi is meant to be watched in spare moments on the fly. But in the age of coronavirus, the notion of “on the fly” is in tatters, replaced by infinite oceans of time. So the very thing that differentiates Quibi from the pack, its raison d’être, has vanished.
When I met Katzenberg and his Quibi partner Meg Whitman in January, they showed me a preview of Nest, a thriller in which a man breaks into a young woman’s house at night. I pointed out that seeing an intruder via the home-security app on the woman’s phone might be even creepier if a viewer watched it in bed on their own phone. “Well, no, you’re on a bus or subway, you’re on the go. It’s 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.,” Katzenberg told me. Quibi’s creator had very stringent instructions for how the platform was to be used, though Whitman did add, “You’re allowed to watch it at home, if you want.” Some shows, like Steven Spielberg’s horror series Spielberg After Dark, were even more specific. After Dark was not only designed to be watched at night, but is literally inaccessible to viewers after sundown in their timezone.
In the olden days, TV was defined by limitations: There were just a few channels, you could only watch a show at the exact time it aired, it was impossible to skip commercials, and you had to wait a week to see the next episode. But in 2020, viewers expect full control.
2. Too Many Barriers to Entry
Quibi was intended to be viewed only on an iPhone or an Android. There were no provisions for Apple TV or Google Chromecast or smart TVs at launch, not to mention laptops. Seemingly bowing to pressure, Quibi has announced that it will soon be possible to cast the content to bigger screens from iPhones and, shortly thereafter, Androids. That means the platform’s much-vaunted “turnstyle” technology—which allows viewers to toggle between different perspectives by turning the phone vertically or horizontally—will be largely nullified.