Quibi launches in UK
David Farnor | On 06, Apr 2020
Quibi is now available in the UK, as the new streaming platform lands on British soil on the same day as its US launch.
The platform, which was first unveiled in 2018, is the brainchild of the former DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg and former HP CEO Meg Whitman. It aims to compete with Netflix, Amazon and other established VOD players by focusing on short-form content rather than long-form TV. Series on the service range from two to four hours and are divided into chunks of 7 to 10 minutes, designed specifically for viewing on mobile devices – video is also compatible with both portrait and landscape viewing on-the-go, with a nifty “Turnstyle” feature that allows you to ping between the two by tilting your phone.
The name comes from “Quick Bites” and places it more in the territory of YouTube’s subscription service, YouTube Premium, than Netflix. Indeed, the platform in the US is priced at $4.99 with ads and $7.99 without ads. In the UK, where nobody expected the app to launch at the same time, just the ad-free option is available for £7.99 a month, although Quibi is offering a substantial free trial of 90 days.
Shows available at launch include four scripted titles: Survive, starring Sophie Turner and Corey Hawkins, Flipped, starring Steve Mallory and Damon Jones, Most Dangerous Game, starring Liam Hemsworth and Christoph Waltz, and When the Streetlights Go On, starring Chosen Jacobs and Queen Latifer. These are called “Movies in Chapters”, with the rest of the line-up divided into “Daily Essentials”, which is sub-divided into news and lifestyle programmes all served up in tiny chunks.
The coming year is set to offer around 170 shows, with many series released in stages, following the same strategy as Apple TV+, which also has a limited pool of original content at launch – the scripted shows tend to have three episodes available now, with more released over the coming weeks, with other originals set to launch in the coming months, typically on Mondays. That means Quibi can get a steady drumbeat of new releases going to keep subscribers’ attention.
Which brings us to the other notable aspect of Quibi: its strangely understated launch in the UK. The app arrives at a time when the country has been largely locked down, with audiences turning to their TVs and computers for long-form entertainment – precisely the opposite of Quibi’s mobile-only approach of on-the-move streaming. That might mean Quibi waits until later this year to push its wares heavily, when the idea of dipping into something on your phone on the bus or train chimes in more with people’s lifestyles, especially given the way that Disney+ has, conversely, potentially benefited from the unexpected timing of the coronavirus pandemic.
To sign up, viewers will have to download the mobile app and register an account – a process that some have had trouble with, and may require checking your inbox for a validation email (regardless of any error messages) before the app plays ball.
For more on what’s available on Quibi, click here.
Quibi streaming service eyes spring 2020 launch
11th June 2019
New streaming service Quibi is planning to launch in April 2020, Jeffrey Katzenberg has announced.
The platform, which was first unveiled last year with the provisional name “NewTV”, is the brainchild of the former DreamWorks Animation CEO and former HP CEO Meg Whitman. It aims to compete by focusing on short-form content rather than long-form TV. Series on the site will range from two to four hours and be divided into chunks of seven to ten minutes, designed specifically for on mobile devices – video will also be compatible with both portrait and landscape viewing on-the-go.
Over an initial two-week period of free access, Quibi will launch eight “super-premium” movies in bited-size pieces, before then rolling out anther 26 signature movies every other Monday during its first 12 months. Its budget for original content will be around $1 billion for that first year, with another $470 million spent on marketing. The service will, after its North America launch, eventually roll out globally.
“It’s a big bet, and a high bar,” Katzenberg said during his keynote speech at the Banff World Media Festival this week.
He noted that while Netflix, Amazon and Hulu and others giants will dominate the streaming scene, audiences only watch series on phones around 10 per cent of the time, which will give Quibi an opening to become the only premium digital platform for mobile content. The service will face competition from YouTube Premium, although the Google-owned site is planning to shift away from its subscription model to make its original series available for free with ads.
“No one is doing what we’re doing today,” Katzenberg said. “We’re no more competing with them [streaming giants] than Spotify is competing with them. … What we’re doing is taking what is a tried-and-true form of consumption and now offering people a premium version of it.”
The US launch date will be 6th April 2020. Pricing is expected to be around $4.99 a month with short ads, or $7.99 without them.
NewTV: Jeffrey Katzenberg’s mobile streaming start-up gets Hollywood’s backing
9th August 2019
In the ongoing race for viewers’ eyeballs online, Hollywood has just backed a new horse: NewTV, a streaming service designed for mobile video.
The venture is the brainchild of former DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg and former HP CEO Meg Whitman, who this week raised funding for its start-up, which will look to compete with other streaming services by focusing not on long-form original programming but short-form series to watch on the go. The service, which is aiming to launch in 2019, will have two options: an ad-free plan and an ad-supported option.
“We don’t consider this competitive with Hulu, or HBO, or Netflix, or the networks,” Katzenberg explained to Variety in an interview. “It’s a completely different use case.”
With billions of people now watching video on their phones in growing numbers, the market opportunity is clear to see. Indeed, Netflix already has its own short-form content, from a growing arsenal of short documentaries (including one Oscar winner) to 15-minute stand-up showcase The Comedy Lineup, and a partnership with BuzzFeed News for a series called Follow This, plus a similar non-fiction effort from Vox, called Explained.
Katzenberg has insisted that NewTV will be “fundamentally different”, notes Variety, built from the ground up to be tailored to mobile viewing.
“For all the different formats of television, there are ways to innovate and adapt them into content you can conveniently watch in chapters on the go,” said Katzenberg.
While that might differentiate the platform from Netflix, however, it places it much closer to YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram and Facebook, all of which have original or exclusive short-form content and user-uploaded content in varying ratios, with videos ranging from comedy and sketches to dramatic web series and reality shows. Unlike all of those, NewTV won’t have any live TV in its line-up. It also won’t produce shows itself, but will licence programming from others.
“If you look at the job here of wanting to create a unique quality of content, we also need quantity — and the only way to achieve that quantity is by being able to get the resources, support and access of the big studios,” he added. “From Day One, it was essential to have their support for this.”
With its blend of ad-free and ad-lite monetisation, the platform will follow in the footsteps of YouTube, which is currently attempting to get its own subscription offering, YouTube Premium, off the ground, with the existing target audience of YouTube fans already in place. Rather than rely on a community and its own productions, NewTV’s most unique aspect appears to be that aim to woo big studios to its doors, a focus that capitalises on Katzenberg and Whitman’s connections in both Hollywood and Silicon Valley – less a ground-up and more a top-down business strategy.
“We have built a licensed model that is highly, highly appealing to them,” noted Katzenberg.
With $1 billion in seed-funding raised by backers including Sony, Disney, NBCUniversal, MGM and ITV, that appeal has been backed up by the numbers this week. For NewTV to succeed, though, it will also need to produce a service and content that appeals to the most important people of all: the audience. First step? The name: NewTV is a placeholder working title, with the company expected to announce its actual brand later this year.
