Its run by Meg Whitman and Jeffrey Katzenberg!
It raised a few billion!
If she was so excited about it, why hadnt I heard about it?
Photo: ROBYN BECK / Contributor (Getty Images)
I mulled it over a minute and realized the answer: she wanted to work there, I didnt.
But I had seen this kind of well-funded flameout before.
It happened a few years ago with a startup calledClinkle.
It happened whenrock starstried tostart tech companies.
They had done cinema verite once before, with reality TV, right?
Why couldnt they get back some of that magic?
My cinematographer buddyLoren Feldmanalways notes that studios spend thousands or millions of dollars a minute on their shows.
You dont get snappy dialogue, guaranteed laugh/cry lines, and great VFX on a budget.
There is an uncrossable distance between the best TikTok video and the worst online grid TV show.
Millions are spent on PR for stars, plastic surgery, and fitness regimens.
Everything about Hollywood, the good and the bad, costs money.
Quibi wanted to break with traditionwithin reason.
Quibi failed because no one wants to pay for a formalized bite-sized content experience.
Just as magazine journalism begat free blogs, reality TV begat the TikTok star.
In this time of the pandemic, we want to watch long-form video.
We want to watch video that has been massaged and carefully shot and beautifully rendered.
We want Lovecraft Country, not an 11 minute short aboutsomeones golden arm.
Maybe Quibi gave actors and producers and writers a chance to experiment, to mess around.
Maybe it was a hothouse of ideas.
Maybe it could have survived in a world where everyone was still on the subway.
But heres the trick: you could still watch Netflix on the subway and you could still watch TikTok.
Both of those exist.
There was no reason for anything to fall smack dab in the middle.
Quibis Katzenberg was scared.
His old world was rapidly aging.
He wanted to lend a hand to the new one (palm outstretched, of course.)
Those kids grew up and they watch Amazon Prime.
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