Failure or fiasco?

I did want to make note of the shutting down of Quibi, which is probably getting more coverage than the service got in the seven months it was running.

The mobile streaming service offered entertainment and news programs in five- to 10-minute chunks intended to be watched on phones by people on the go, but it struggled to find an audience with everyone stuck inside their homes during the pandemic.

They didn’t even offer a desktop/TV option until two weeks ago, as I understand it. Someone on Reddit mentioned a couple of examples of Quibi’s content:

“Chrissy’s Court”, “an American comedic arbitration-based court show starring television personality and model Chrissy Teigen and her mother, Vilailuck “Pepper Thai” Teigen“.

“Dummy”, “…based on a real life experience between [Cody] Heller and her partner Dan Harmon, in which she discovered that he had a sex doll.” (“Cody Heller” was played by Anna Kendrick. “Dan Harmon” was played by “Donal Logue”.)

Okay, I’m not being 100% fair. They apparently had a remake of “The Fugitive” with Kiefer Sutherland (as a cop), and a version of “Most Dangerous Game“, among others.

I’m just amused that they managed to flush $2 billion down the drain and have nothing to show for it except a couple of minor Emmy awards. If I understand the stories I’ve read correctly, they don’t even have the rights to their content: the producers can go upload it to YouTube or sell it to some other channel, now that Quibi is gone.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2020 at 3:00 pm and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Responses to “Failure or fiasco?”

  1. Lawrence Person says:
    October 23, 2020 at 9:23 am

    I smell a Producers-style scam, or outright embezzlement.

    With $2 billion down the hole, somebody got rich…

  2. stainles says:
    October 23, 2020 at 12:05 pm

    Before yesterday, I would have disagreed with you about this being a “Producers”-style scam. I thought it was just another example of why you shouldn’t give money to Meg Whitman and Jeffrey Katzenberg for anything, even a pizza.

    Then somebody posted this line from “Dummy” on Reddit (and I confirmed it by watching about 20 seconds of the trailer on YouTube):

    We’re all sex dolls until we topple the patriarchy.

    Yeah, that’s some next level “Springtime For Hitler” (stuff) right there…