Quibi
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Original Content podcast: ‘Wireless’ shows off Quibi’s Turnstyle technology
“Wireless” is probably the best showcase so far for Quibi’s Turnstyle technology.
That’s the technology that allows the streaming video app to switch seamlessly between landscape and portrait mode depending on the orientation of your phone. With other Quibi shows, you’re essentially getting two views of the same footage — but with “Wireless” (which is executive produced by Steven Soderbergh), you’re switching between traditional cinematic footage (in landscape) and a view of the protagonist’s phone (in portrait).
In this bonus episode of the Original Content podcast, director Zach Wechter told me that he and his co-writer Jack Seidman wrote the initial script — about a college student played by Tye Sheridan who gets trapped in the snow after a car crash, with only his iPhone to save him — before they decided on the phone-centric format. But when they heard about Turnstyle, “It just felt like a match made in heaven that would allow us to facilitate this idea.”
I wondered whether that required going back and adding a bunch of phone interactions to the story, but said Wechter said, “It was quite the opposite. One thing we found in testing was when the phone plot moved really fast, it would be hard, because there are these two perspectives happening at once.”
So that actually meant “reducing some fo the intriacy of the plot happening on the phone” to ensure that viewers didn’t get lost.
And if you’re wondering which mode to focus on as you watch, Wechter has some simple advice: “Go with your gut.” He said he had a “roadmap” for when he was hoping to nudge viewers to turn their phones — like when there’s a notification sound or Sheridan focuses on his phone — “but I think the most important part of the experience is that we’re not indicating when our viewers turn, that it becomes this sort of passive-but-active viewing experience.”
Wechter described making the show — essentially a feature length film divided into episodes of 10 minutes or less — as shooting “two films that had to dance together” in just 19 days. And he made things even more challenging by insisting that all the phone/FaceTime calls and even the text messages be filmed live, rather than just recording both ends separately.
“When I think about directing and my job, really the most fundamental part of it to me is making the actorss comfortable, and I think that having a scene partner is paramount,” he said. “It was a long conversation about why we couldn’t just have them act off of a recording and shoot it separately — because it took a lot of logistical effort and resources to do it — but it really makes the scenes feel very alive and realistic.”
You can listen to the full interview in the player below, subscribe using Apple Podcasts or find us in your podcast player of choice. If you like the show, please let us know by leaving a review on Apple. You can also follow us on Twitter or send us feedback directly. (Or suggest shows and movies for us to review!)
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Quibi founder Jeffrey Katzenberg blames coronavirus for the streaming app’s challenges
Quibi founder Jeffrey Katzenberg is admitting that the short-form video service’s launch hasn’t gone the way he’d hoped — and he knows what to blame for its issues.
“I attribute everything that has gone wrong to coronavirus,” Katzenberg said in an interview with The New York Times. “Everything. But we own it.”
Back in April, I actually asked Quibi executives about how they thought the worldwide pandemic and widespread social distancing measures might affect their launch. After all, an app designed to deliver videos under 10 minutes when you’re on-the-go seems less appealing when no one can leave their house (where you can just sit on your couch and watch Netflix).
“I’m looking to take small breaks more than ever before to stand up, walk around, go outside,” CTO Rob Post said at the time. “Our use cases are these in-between moments. Now more than ever, that use case is still present.”
Similarly, Katzenberg told The Times he’d hoped “there would still be many in-between moments while sheltering in place.” Instead, he argued that those moments are still happening, “but it’s not the same. It’s out of sync.”
How badly has the launch gone? Quibi says it has been downloaded around 3.5 million times, and that it currently has 1.3 million active users. That’s a significant audience, especially for a service that was only released a little over a month ago.
Still, Katzenberg admitted it’s “not close to what we wanted.” And the company is apparently adjusting its projections, which had called for the service to reach 7 million users and $250 million in subscriber revenue in its first year.
At least it sounds like Quibi is trying to learn and adapt. For one thing, the marketing has started to shift to promoting specific shows like a “Reno 911” reboot, rather than advertising the idea of Quibi itself. For another, the company said it will be adding TV viewing support for iOS users this week.
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Quibi is the anti-TikTok (that’s a bad thing)
It takes either audacious self-confidence or reckless hubris to build a completely asocial video app in 2020. You can decide which best describes Quibi, Hollywood’s $1.75 billion-funded attempt at a mobile-only Netflix of six to 10-minute micro-TV show episodes. Quibi manages to miss every trend and tactic that could help make its app popular. The company seems to believe it can succeed on only its content (mediocre) and marketing dollars (fewer than it needs).
I appreciate that Quibi is doing something audaciously different than most startups. Rather than iterating toward product-market fit, it spent a fortune developing its slick app and buying fancy content in secret so it could launch with a bang.
Yet Quibi’s bold business strategy is muted by a misguided allegiance to the golden age of television before the internet permeated every entertainment medium. It’s unshareable, prescriptive, sluggish, cumbersome and unfriendly. Quibi’s unwillingness to borrow anything from social networks makes the app feel cold and isolated, like watching reality shows in the vacuum of space.
In that sense, Quibi is the inverse of TikTok, which feels fiercely alive. TikTok is designed to immediately immerse you in crowd-vetted content that grabs your attention and inspires you to spread your take on it to friends. That’s why TikTok has almost 2 billion downloads to date, while Quibi picked up just 300,000 on the day of its big splash into market.
Here’s a breakdown of the major missteps by Quibi, why TikTok does it better and how this new streaming app can get with the times.
What Hollywood thinks we want
Quibi feels like some off-brand cable channel, with a mix of convoluted reality shows, scripted dramas and news briefs. Imagine MTV at noon in the mid-2000s. Nothing seemed must-see. There’s no Game of Thrones or Mandalorian here. While the production value is better than what you’ll find on YouTube, the show concepts feel slapdash with novelty that quickly fades.
Chrissy Teigen as a small claims court judge? The tear-jerking “Thanks A Million” does skillfully multiply the “OMG” gratitude moment from makeover programs to happen 4X per episode. But a cooking show where blindfolded chefs have to guess what food was just exploded in their faces…(sigh)
The catalog feels like the product of TV writers being told they have 10 seconds to come up with an idea. “What would those idiots watch?” The shows remind me of old VR games that are barely more than demos, or an app built in a garage without ever asking prospective users what they need. Co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg may have produced The Lion King and Shrek, but the app’s content feels like it was greenlit by, well, Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s leader Meg Whitman, who indeed is Quibi’s CEO.
Quibi CEO Meg Whitman
Despite being built for a touch-screen interface, there’s little Bandersnatch-style interactive content so far, nor are the creators doing anything special with the six to 10-minute format. The shows feel more like condensed TV programs with episodes ending when there would be a commercial break. There’s no onboarding process that could ask which popular TV shows or genres you’re into. As the catalog expands, that makes it less likely you’ll find something appealing within a few taps.
TikTok comes from the opposite direction. Instead of what Hollywood thinks we want, its content comes straight from its consumers. People record what they think would make them and their friends laugh, surprised or enticed. The result is that with low to zero production budget, random kids and influencers alike make things with millions of Likes. And as elder millennials, Gen Xers and beyond get hooked, they’re creating videos for their peers, as well. The algorithm monitors what you’re hovering over and rapidly adapts its recommendations to your style.
TikTok is fundamentally interactive. Each clip’s audio can be borrowed to produce remixes that personalize a meme for a different demographic or subculture. And because its stars are internet natives, they’re in constant communication with their fan base to tune content to what they want. There’s something for everyone. No niche is too small.
TikTok screenshots
The Fix: Quibi should take a hint from Brat TV, the Disney Channel for the YouTube generation that gives tween social media stars their own premium shows about being a grade school kid to create content with a built-in fan base. [Disclosure: My cousin Darren Lachtman is a Brat co-founder.)
Take the Chrissy’s Court model, and shift it to stars who are 20 years younger. Give TikTok phenoms like Charli D’Amelio or Chase Hudson Quibi shows and let them help conceptualize the content, and they’ll bring their legions of fans. Double-down on choose-your-own-adventures and fan voting game shows that leverage the phone’s interactivity. Fund creators that will differentiate Quibi by making it look like anything other than daytime TV. And ask users directly what they want to see right when they download the app.
No screenshots
This is frankly insane. Screenshots of Quibi appear as a blank black screen. That means no memes. If people can’t turn Quibi scenes into jokes they’ll share elsewhere, its shows won’t ever become fixtures of the cultural zeitgeist like Netflix’s Tiger King has. Yes, other mobile streaming apps like Netflix and Disney+ also block screenshots, but they have web versions where you can snap and share what you want. Quibi never should have structured its deals to license content from producers in a way that prevented any way to riff on or even let friends preview its content.
TikTok, on the other hand, defaults to letting you download any video and share it wherever you please — with the app’s watermark attached. That’s fueled TikTok’s stellar growth as clips get posted to Twitter and Instagram — and drive viewers back to the app. It has spawned TikTok compilations on YouTube, and a whole culture of remixing that expands and prolongs the popularity of trending jokes and dances.
The Fix: Quibi should allow screenshots. There’s little risk of spoilers or piracy. If its deals prohibit that, then it should offer pre-approved screenshots and video clips/trailers of each episode that you can download and share. Think of it like an in-app press kit. Even if we’re not allowed to set up the perfect screenshot for making a meme, at least then we could coherently discuss the shows on other social networks.
Sluggish pacing
On mobile, you’re always just a swipe away from something more interesting. It’s like if you watched TV with your finger permanently hovering over the change channel button. Ever noticed how movie trailers now often start with a fast-forward collage of their most eye-catching scenes? Quibi seems intent on communicating prestige with its slow-building dramas like The Most Dangerous Game and Survive, which both had me bored and fast-forwarding. And that’s watching Quibi at home on the couch. While on the go, where it was designed to be consumed, slow pacing could push users with a minute or two to spare to open Instagram or TikTok instead.
None of this is helped by Quibi not auto-playing a trailer or the first episode the moment you scroll past a show on the home screen. Instead, you see a static title card for two seconds before it starts playing you an excerpt of the program. That makes it more cumbersome to discover new shows.
Where TikTok wins is in immediacy. Creators know users will swipe right past their video if it’s not immediately entertaining or obviously revving up to a big reveal. They grab you in the first second with smiles, costumes, bold captions or crazy situations. That also makes it easy for viewers to dismiss what’s irrelevant to them and teach the TikTok algorithm what they really want. Plus, you know that you can score a dopamine hit of joy even if you only have 30 seconds. TikTok makes Quick Bites feel like an understaffed sit-down restaurant.
The Fix: Quibi needs to teach creators to hook viewers instantly by previewing why they should want to watch. Since tapping a show’s card on the Quibi homepage instantly plays it, those teasers need to be built into the first episode. Otherwise, Quibi needs a button to view a trailer from its buried dedicated show pages to the preview card most people interact with on the home screen. Otherwise, users may never discover what Quibi shows resonate with them and teach it which to show and make more of.
Anti-social video club
Quibi neglects all its second-screen potential. No screenshotting makes it tough to discuss shows elsewhere, yet there’s no built-in comments or messaging to discuss or spread them in-app. Pasting an episode link into Twitter doesn’t even display the show’s name in the preview box. Nor do shows have their own social accounts to follow to remind you to keep watching.
There’s no way for friends to follow what you’re watching or see your recommendations. No leaderboards of top shows. Certainly no time-stamped, live-stream style crowd annotations. No synced-up co-watching with friends, despite a lack of TV apps preventing you from watching with anyone else in person unless you crowd around one phone.
It all feels like Quibi figured advertising would be enough. It could run contests where winners get a Cameo-esque message or chat with their favorite stars. Quibi could let you share scenes with your face swapped onto actors’ heads, deepfake-style like Snapchat’s (confusingly named) Cameos feature. It could host in-app roundtables with the casts where users could submit questions. It’s like if Web 2.0 never happened.
TikTok, meanwhile, harnesses every conceivable social feature. Follow, Like, comment, message, go Live, duet, remix or download and share any video. It beckons viewers to participate in trending challenges. And even when users aren’t itching to return to TikTok, notifications from these social features will drag them back in, or watermarked clips will follow them to other networks. Every part of the app is designed to make its content the center of popular culture.
The Fix: Quibi needs to understand that just because we’re watching on mobile, doesn’t make video a solo experience. At first, it should add social content discovery options so you can see which friends opt in to share that they’re watching or view a leaderboard of the top programs. Shows, especially ones dripping out new episodes, are more fun when you have someone to chat about them with.
Eventually, Quibi should layer on in-app second-screen features. Create a way to share comments at the end of each episode that people read during the credits so they feel like they’re in a viewing community.
Can Quibi be more?
What’s most disappointing about Quibi is that it has the potential to be something fresh, merging classically produced premium content with the modern ways we use our phones. Yet beyond shows being shot in two widths so you can switch between watching in landscape or portrait mode at any time, it really is just a random cable channel shrunk down.
Youths act in front of a mobile phone camera while making a TikTok video on the terrace of their residence in Hyderabad on February 14, 2020 (Photo by NOAH SEELAM / AFP) (Photo by NOAH SEELAM/AFP via Getty Images)
One of the few redeeming opportunities for Quibi is using the daily episode release schedule to serialize content that benefits from suspense, as Ryan Vinnicombe aka InternetRyan notes. Bingeing via traditional streaming services can burn through thrillers before they can properly build up suspense and fan theories or let late-comers catch up while a show is still in the zeitgeist. Cliffhangers with just a day instead of a week to wait could be Quibi’s killer feature.
Suspense is also one thing TikTok fails at. Within a single video, they’re actually often all about suspense, waiting through build up for a gag or non-sequitur to play out. But creators try to rope in followers by making a multi-minute video and splitting it into parts so people subscribe to them to see the next part. Yet since TikTok doesn’t always show timestamps and surfaces old videos on its home screen, it can often be a chore to find the Part Two, and there’s no good way for creators to link them together. TikTok could stand to learn about multi-episode content from Quibi.
But today, Quibi feels like a minitiaturized and degraded version of what we already get for free on the web or pay for with Netflix. Quibi charging $4.99 per month with ads or $7.99 without seems like a steep ask without delivering any truly must-see shows, novel interactive experience or memory-making social moments.
Quibi’s success may simply be a test of how bad people are at cancelling 90-day free trials (hint: they’re bad at it!). The bull case is that absentminded subscribers among the 300,000 first-day downloads and some diehard fans of the celebs it’s given shows will bring Quibi enough traction to raise more cash and survive long enough to socialize its product and teach creators to exploit the format’s opportunities.
But the bear case is already emerging in Quibi’s rapidly declining App Store rank, which fell from No. 4 overall when it launched Monday to No. 21 yesterday after just 830,000 total downloads according to Sensor Tower. Lackluster content and no virality means it might never become the talk of the town, leading top content producers to slink away or half-ass their contributions, leaving us to dine on short video elsewhere.
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Original Content podcast: We have mixed feelings about Quibi
Quibi, the short-form, mobile-focused video service that Hollywood executive Jeffrey Katzenberg first hinted at in 2017, officially launched on Monday.
After years of star-studded content announcements, not to mention $1.75 billion in funding, it might have been impossible for Quibi to live up to expectations. And indeed, it divided the hosts of the Original Content podcast.
None of us was totally won over, but Anthony and Jordan saw something to admire in Quibi’s ambition, and thought there was promise for the initial lineup of shows — particularly the reality programs like “Chrissy’s Court” and “Punk’d,” which actually seem to benefit from the constraints of the short episode format.
There are some interesting scripted titles too, but even the shows we liked — particularly the Liam Hemsworth thriller “Most Dangerous Game” — felt like they’d be better on a bigger screen, with a more traditional running time.
Darrell, meanwhile, enjoyed some of the content, but he was more convinced that the whole enterprise is a massive folly. In his view, the only way to make Quibi work is to take a looser approach to length and to bring the app to other devices.
You can listen to our review in the player below, subscribe using Apple Podcasts or find us in your podcast player of choice. If you like the show, please let us know by leaving a review on Apple. You can also send us feedback directly. (Or suggest shows and movies for us to review!)
And if you’d like to skip ahead, here’s how the episode breaks down:
0:00 Intro
0:27 “Star Trek: Picard” listener response
6:04 Quibi first impressions
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Quibi had a launch day outage
Looks like things haven’t gone completely smoothly with Quibi‘s launch.
The issue appears to have been resolved, but the Quibi customer support account tweeted this afternoon that “some users may be experiencing problems with the Quibi app,” only to add an hour later that “Users should once again be able to use the Quibi app normally. Thank you for your patience.”
It’s not clear how widespread the outage was, but according to The Verge, one staffer saw an error screen and was unable to browse the app, while another was unable to create an account. The app seems to be working normally as I write this shortly after 4pm Eastern.
If nothing else, it’s a reminder that reliably delivering streaming video is hard, even for a startup that’s raised $1.75 billion. Heck, even Disney experienced widespread streaming issues when it launched Disney+ in November. (It all worked out fine.)
Users should once again be able to use the @Quibi app normally. Thank you for your patience.
— Quibi Cares (@quibicares) April 6, 2020
A quick catch-up for those of you still wondering what Quibi even is: It’s a short-form video service founded by Hollywood executive Jeffrey Katzenberg and led by CEO Meg Whitman (previously CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and eBay).
The app is launching with nearly 50 shows today, all of them created specifically for mobile, with episodes that are less than 10 minutes long. After a 90-day free trial, it’ll cost you $4.99 with ads or $7.99 per month without ads.
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Daily Crunch: Quibi finally launches its mobile streaming app
Quibi launches its mobile streaming service, Apple sources 20 million protective masks and Red Hat announces a new CEO. Here’s your Daily Crunch for April 6, 2020.
1. Quibi launches its mobile streaming service in the middle of the quarantine era
The much-hyped mobile app promising to deliver “quick bites” of video entertainment is finally here. The company has been in the headlines for more than two years, thanks to the involvement of founder Jeffrey Katzenberg (who previously co-founded DreamWorks Animation) and CEO Meg Whitman (previously the CEO of eBay and Hewlett Packard Enterprise), not to mention $1.75 billion in funding.
Judging from a few hours of exploration, the app is as slick as promised, with impressive Turnstyle technology for switching between portrait and landscape viewing. What’s missing so far, however, is any real sense of creative breakthrough.
2. Apple has sourced over 20 million protective masks, now building and shipping face shields
The company is working with governments around the world to distribute its supply of face masks to where it’s needed most. Meanwhile, the first delivery of Apple face shields went out to Kaiser hospital facilities in the Santa Clara valley earlier this week, according to CEO Tim Cook.
3. Paul Cormier takes over as Red Hat CEO, as Jim Whitehurst moves to IBM
Cormier would seem to be a logical choice to run Red Hat, having been with the company since 2001. He joined as its VP of engineering and has seen the company grow from a small startup to a multi-billion dollar company.
Jon Evans argues that GrubHub (which also owns Seamless) is hurting, not helping, the restaurants that it pretends it’s trying to support.
5. Pandemic puts the brakes on micromobility
Ride Report creates software that enables cities to better work with micro-mobility operators and has a bird’s-eye view on the industry. In a conversation with TechCrunch, CEO William Henderson outlined what we can expect for micro-mobility operators during the pandemic and once it’s over. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
6. Open banking fintech Yapily raises $13M Series A
Founded in mid-2017 by ex-Goldman Sachs employee Stefano Vaccino, Yapily’s open banking platform makes it easier for various service providers to connect to banks. Specifically, it provides a way to retrieve financial data and initiate payments via a “single secure API” that in turn connects to each supported bank’s open API.
7. This week’s TechCrunch podcasts
The latest full-length episode of Equity discusses the tremendous growth of Zoom and how that’s cast a spotlight on the videoconferencing app’s security flaws, while the Monday news roundup looks for positive signs in startup funding. And on Original Content, we review the first season of “Star Trek: Picard” and the extremely unsettling Netflix film “The Platform.”
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
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Quibi launches its mobile streaming service in the middle of the quarantine era
Quibi, the much-hyped mobile app promising to deliver “quick bites” of video entertainment, is finally here.
The company has been in the headlines for more than two years, thanks to the involvement of founder Jeffrey Katzenberg (who previously co-founded DreamWorks Animation) and CEO Meg Whitman (previously the CEO of eBay and Hewlett Packard Enterprise).
Plus, it’s raised a whopping $1.75 billion to fund a star-studded content slate from filmmakers like Steven Spielberg, Guillermo del Toro, Lena Waithe and Catherine Hardwicke.
Quibi is launching with nearly 50 shows today. The initial lineup includes “Chrissy’s Court” (in which Chrissy Teigen presides over small claims court), “Shape of Pasta” (a food and travel show starring chef Evan Funke), “Most Dangerous Game” (a dystopian thriller starring Liam Hemsworth) and “Survive” (a scripted plane crash drama starring Sophie Turner). All the episodes are less than 10 minutes in length, and can be viewed in either portrait or landscape mode.
Quibi says it will be delivering more than 25 new episodes every day, including segments of what the company is calling Daily Essentials — news and entertainment shows like “Last Night’s Late Night” from Entertainment Weekly and “The Replay” from ESPN.
The service will cost $4.99 with ads or $7.99 per month without ads. Quibi is also offering a 90-day free trial if you sign up before the end of April.
Image Credits: Quibi
In a briefing with reporters last week, CTO Rob Post acknowledged that it’s been a long, expensive road to launch. But he said that given the heavy investment in content, “There was no room for [Chief Product Officer Tom Conrad] and I to deliver a minimum viable product.” Instead, they had to build something that was fully polished.
While Quibi has been building up to this for months, with a big presentation at the Consumer Electronics Show, Super Bowl ads and more, the world has changed, with a global pandemic making this a strange time to launch any product.
People are certainly looking for distraction and escape right now. But the app is designed for viewing while you’re on-the-go, whether that’s walking around, waiting in line or sitting in the backseat of a car — all moments that are happening considerably less often as huge swaths of the population are advised to shelter in place and maintain social distance.
Still, Post argued that there’s a need for the kind of entertainment that Quibi is offering.
“I’m looking to take small breaks more than ever before to stand up, walk around, go outside,” he said. “Our use cases are these in-between moments. Now more than ever, that use case is still present.”
And of course, these restrictions have also created challenges for Quibi’s launch and content production.
“That’s meant all kinds of things,” Conrad said. “Our Daily Essentials, which were all set to be produced in studios in New York and L.A. each day, in most instances are being shot in people’s homes … Everybody from the production team to postproduction houses to the engineering and marketing organizations are trying to adapt to this moment.”
Quibi has already been showing off is Turnstyle technology, which allows for a seamless transition back-and-forth between portrait and landscape modes. (Apparently Quibi’s filmmakers have to deliver two edits of each episode, one optimized for each orientation.) Last week, the company gave reporters access to the full app.
Judging from a few hours of exploration, Quibi is indeed as polished as Post and Conrad promised, making it easy to swipe through and browse the day’s offerings. Turnstyle also works smoothly, with a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it transition every time I rotate my phone.
I quickly noticed, however, that I was torn between the two viewing modes. Portrait mode was more comfortable, particularly when I was watching a full seven- or eight-minute episode, but landscape mode looked much more cinematic, and often included imagery that had been cropped out of the more narrow, vertical footage.
Image Credits: Quibi
In addition, the focus on a smartphone app — rather than an experience for the browser, tablet or connected-TV — made for a clumsy experience anytime I tried to watch with someone else. (The whole point is to focus on the mobile viewing experience, but Conrad said, “If there’s appetite for Quibi in the living room or on tablets, we certainly will follow that interest as the data reveals.”)
As for the content itself, my favorite show was probably “Most Dangerous Game,” which kicks off with a tantalizingly bleak introduction (the premise will be familiar to viewers of the classic film of the same name). I also enjoyed “Shape of Pasta,” which includes plenty of mouth-watering pasta footage, and”Chrissy’s Court” — Teigen is always delightful, and I liked seeing a courtroom reality show that leans more into humor than drama.
At CES, Whitman positioned Quibi as the first platform to truly take advantage of the new creative opportunities that mobile phones offer to filmmakers. She also emphasized that in contrast to free video platforms like YouTube, Quibi will offer “Hollywood-quality content.”
“[YouTube] is the most ubiquitous, democratized, incredibly creative platform,” Whitman told us. “But they make content for hundreds of dollars a minute. We make it for $100,000 a minute.”
The production value is certainly evident — most of the shows I watched look significantly more expensive that what you’ll find on YouTube. What’s missing so far, however, is any real sense of the creative breakthrough that Whitman was hinting at. Instead, Quibi delivers well-produced, moderately entertaining shows that can be watched when you’ve got a few minutes to spare. They’re fine, but rarely more than that.
Maybe that will be enough for most viewers, particularly during the trial period. The challenge will be convincing those viewers to stick around and pay a subscription fee. To do that, I suspect Quibi will need a breakout show, or something that really takes advantage of the phone in a new way. We’ll see if that arrives in the months to come.
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T-Mobile customers on unlimited wireless family plans get a free year of Quibi
T-Mobile this morning officially announced its exclusive partnership with the new streaming service, Quibi, set to launch on April 6. The service will be made available for free for a year to T-Mobile customers on its unlimited wireless family plans.
The streaming service, founded by Hollywood media mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, has been specifically built for on-the-go viewing on mobile devices. Its “shows” can be watched in 10 minutes or less and take advantage of the mobile device’s ability to be held different ways to enable seamless switching between portrait and landscape modes.
Thanks to Katzenberg’s industry connections, Quibi original content will feature A-Listers and other big names, including Jennifer Lopez, Chrissy Teigen, Chance the Rapper, Liam Hemsworth, Sophie Turner, Lena Waithe, Nicole Richie, Reese Witherspoon and others.
Typically, Quibi subscriptions are offered at $4.99 per month for its ad-supported plan or $7.99 per month for its ad-free option.
Quibi had confirmed last October that a deal with T-Mobile was in place, in statements made to various news outlets. But the details of the deal itself were not yet announced nor confirmed by T-Mobile at that time.
According to T-Mobile’s release, Magenta and ONE plans with taxes and fees included will be eligible for the free Quibi add-on, as will discounted First Responder, Military and Magenta Plus 55 plans, and small business customers with up to 12 lines.
T-Mobile customers can go to mytmobile.com now through July 7 to sign up, or they can use the T-Mobile Android or iOS app beginning on April 6 to add Quibi.
In addition, until April 3, T-Mobile customers who use the T-Mobile Tuesdays app for Android or iOS can get early access to three bonus episodes of the new Jennifer Lopez series “Thanks a Million” when it launches on April 6. That means customers will have a total of six episodes to watch at launch. And on April 7, five people who enter the T-Mobile Tuesdays sweepstakes will win a free Google Pixel 4 XL.
“T-Mobile customers have always been ahead of the curve – streaming more data, watching more mobile video – so when we first heard about Quibi, we knew our customers would love it,” said Mike Sievert, president and CEO of T-Mobile, in a statement. “And, with more of us staying home right now, Quibi’s never been more needed. It comes on the scene with a totally different experience, made for mobile, quick to watch and as entertaining as anything you’ve ever seen!”
Teaming up with a mobile carrier to gain traction among customers for a streaming service is a viable strategy. Disney+ did it with Verizon, which ultimately accounted for 20% of its early customers.
However, Quibi isn’t Disney — it’s not a known brand with pent-up consumer demand for a streaming service. What’s more, its initial marketing no longer makes sense in the post-COVID-19 era.
Quibi has had to reposition its service in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak as something that works for at-home viewing. But in reality, the service had been intended to fill those empty moments in your on-the-go lifestyle — like riding the subway, standing in line, sitting in a waiting room before an appointment and more. Now, with people stuck at home in government lockdowns and home quarantines, the minutes stretch out endlessly. There’s plenty of time to watch long-form content and the living room TV has more draw over the small phone screen.
But ultimately, Quibi’s success may not come down to its technology, tricks or episode length. It will come down the quality of its shows and their ability to capture an audience.
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Quibi and Eko are in a legal battle over video tech
Two video startups are making dueling legal claims against the other.
The Wall Street Journal broke the news yesterday that interactive video company Eko is accusing Quibi of infringing on its patented technology.
At around the same time, The Hollywood Reporter noted that Quibi (which is launching its short-form mobile video service next month) has filed a complaint in California federal court claiming that Eko has engaged in “a campaign of threats and harassment.”
At the heart of the dispute is Quibi’s Turnstyle technology, which allows viewers to seamlessly switch between landscape and portrait-mode viewing.
Both companies seem to agree that Eko CEO Yoni Bloch met with Jeffrey Katzenberg in March 2017 (before Katzenberg had even founded Quibi) about a possible investment in Eko, and that there was at least one follow-up meeting between Quibi and Eko employees in 2019.
Eko claims that it provided Quibi employees — both while they were working at Quibi and before then, when they were previously at Snap — with details and code behind its technology. Then, after Katzenberg and Quibi CEO Meg Whitman showed off Turnstyle at CES this year, Eko sent a letter to Quibi claiming that the feature infringed on its intellectual property. (According to the Journal’s story, Eko’s lawyers have sent a letter to Quibi but have not filed a lawsuit.)
“Our Turnstyle technology was developed internally at Quibi by our talented engineers and we have, in fact, received a patent for it,” Quibi said in a statement. “These claims have absolutely no merit and we will vigorously defend ourselves against them in court.”
Meanwhile, in a statement, Eko described Quibi’s technology as “a near-identical copy of its own,” and said the company’s legal motion is “nothing more than a PR stunt”:
It is telling that Quibi filed the motion only after learning the Wall Street Journal was going to publish an article exposing allegations of Quibi’s theft of Eko’s technology … Eko will take the legal actions necessary to defend its intellectual property and looks forward to demonstrating its patent rights to the court.
You can read Quibi’s full complaint below.
Quibi complaint by TechCrunch on Scribd
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Quibi will launch with 50 shows on April 6
Short-form video service Quibi is announcing its full launch lineup today — exactly once month before launch.
True to its name (which stands for “quick bites”), Quibi will focus on short videos that you can watch on your phone. Its content will include “movies in chapters” (longer, scripted stories broken into chapters that are between seven and 10 minutes long), as well as unscripted shows, documentaries and daily hits of news/entertainment/inspiration.
The company, which is astoundingly well-funded and led by longtime Hollywood executive Jeffrey Katzenberg and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, says there will be 50 shows live at launch, including:
- “Most Dangerous Game,” a dystopian action thriller starring Liam Hemsworth and Christoph Waltz
- “Survive,” a drama starring Sophie Turner about the aftermath of a plane crash, based on a novel by Alex Morel
- “Chrissy’s Court,” in which Chrissy Teigen presides over small-claims court
- “Murder House Flip,” in which homeowners try to renovate homes that are infamous for murders committed inside
- “Thanks a Million,” a reality series where celebrities (including executive producer Jennifer Lopez) give $100,000 to regular people who must them pay it forward
- “Last Night’s Last Night,” Entertainment Weekly’s daily recap of late-night shows
- “The Replay by ESPN,” offering daily episodes covering sports news
Quibi says it will release a total of 8,500 episodes across 175 shows in its first year.
Using the company’s “Turnstyle” technology, viewers will be able to switch seamlessly between watching videos in portrait and landscape mode. In fact, some shows are designed specifically to offer different-but-complementary viewing experiences in different viewing modes.
The service will cost $4.99 per month with ads or $7.99 per month without ads. Quibi is also announcing today that it’s offering a 90-day free trial — but you’ll need to sign up on the Quibi website before the official launch on April 6.
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