Quibbles with Quibi

Phone-only video service intrigues with quick-bite offerings, talent involved, but the frustrations weigh it down

I figured I was just too old to get it. ¶ When I heard about Quibi, it didn’t seem like a great idea to me. A streaming-video service designed exclusively for smartphones that served up five-to-10-minute slices of scripted entertainment along with reality programming and news? ¶ I mean, I guess that could work? ¶ Truthfully, I found the quick-bite idea appealing. After all, when I plop down on the couch for a bit, I’m increasingly more likely to launch the YouTube app via my Apple TV to watch, say, an eight-minute clip than to dive into a half-hour comedy or hourlong drama on broadcast or cable network or streaming platform. ¶ But the phone-only aspect of Quibi? It made no sense to me then, and, following a two-week free trial with the service, it makes no sense to me now.

To be clear, it’s not that I don’t want to be able to stream on my phone, just as I can do with Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, etc. But, unlike with Quibi, I can watch any of those — and many other services accessible by mobile devices — on one of my two Apple TVconnected flatscreen TVs in my home, to say nothing of my computer and tablet.

I could imagine folks younger than I embracing Quibi. After all, my sense is — and I’m generalizing here — millennials (with their obnoxiously good eyesight) are perfectly content to watch something on their phones.

However, to hear Quibi Founder and Board Chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg — an entertainment giant whose resume includes leading Walt Disney Studios and co-founding

DreamWorks SKG — tell it, the ongoing pandemic has been devastating to Quibi since its launch on April 6.

“I attribute everything that has gone wrong to coronavirus,” Katzenberg recently told The New York Times, which noted Quibi dropped from the list of the 50 most downloaded free iPhone apps in the U.S. a week after the launch. “Everything. But we own it.” Do you? Katzenberg, CEO Meg Whitman — who spent much of the previous decade as CEO of HewlettPackard and told CNBC the launch has gone swimmingly — and others behind Quibi say they envisioned it as something people would use largely on the go, be that while taking public transportation or waiting in line for coffee.

To be fair, many of us have been doing a lot less of both for a couple of months.

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