Jeffrey Katzenberg's Ego Decides That COVID-19 Must Be Why Quibi Totally Sucks And No One Wants It
from the yeah,-sure,-jeff,-that's-it dept
A few weeks back, we went into detail on why Quibi was such a total disaster from Day 1, which can pretty much be summed up by the fact that Hollywood thinks the way you build something people want is to throw tons of money at it (and fudge the books on the back end), while refusing to understand that getting people to actually like what you want -- by making it convenient and building community -- matters. Hollywood overvalues throwing money at big name content makers, and completely ignores the tech, community, and social side of things. And Quibi just makes that whole thing abundantly clear.
However, as Quibi sinks further and further away from relevance, and gets closer and closer to a footnote in a future "whatever happened to....?" story, the mastermind behind the clusterfuck, Jeffrey Katzenberg (formerly of Disney and Dreamworks), has decided that, no, no, the blame belongs entirely with the COVID-19 pandemic, and not with anything that he or his team did wrong:
“I attribute everything that has gone wrong to coronavirus,” Mr. Katzenberg said in a video interview. “Everything. But we own it.”
If you attribute everything to the pandemic then no, Jeff, you don't own it. And, things do not look good at all:
Quibi fell out of the list of the 50 most downloaded free iPhone apps in the United States a week after it went live on April 6. It is now ranked No. 125, behind the game app Knock’em All and the language-learning app Duolingo, according to the analytics firm Sensor Tower.
Either way, the idea that pandemic lockdown would reduce demand for Quibi seems like a convenient excuse -- given that plenty of people have more time on their hands, and basically every other streaming service saw traffic go up, often significantly since the pandemic began.
Katzenberg's nonsense excuse is that he and his Hollywood pals designed Quibi to be used for the "downtime" between life -- like for standing in line or during commutes, and there's less commuting and standing in line right now. But... that seems like pure wishful thinking, especially since other types of "quick bite" content have seen their numbers go up. The NY Times reporter asks Katzenberg about TikTok, which also focuses on very short "quick bites" of video content, and whose usage has also continued to increase during lockdown, and Katzenberg seems to explode at her:
“That’s like comparing apples to submarines,” he said. “I don’t know what people are expecting from us. What did Netflix look like 30 days after it launched? To tell me about a company that has a billion users and is doing great in the past six weeks, I’m happy for them, but what the hell does it have to do with me?”
Hey, look, if the submarines and the apples are targeting the same market -- viewer attention for video content in quick bites -- then, uh, it seems to matter quite a bit. But, I guess when you don't want to admit that you're completely flopping, denying the competition is the competition is one strategy. Not a good one, mind you, but it is one strategy.
Katzenberg does note that Quibi will finally start to do the kinds of things that it should have done from the beginning, like not forcing you to only watch from your phone and (gasp) letting people make screenshots and share them:
Mr. Katzenberg and Ms. Whitman have backpedaled on their original commitment to a smartphone-only app. This week, Quibi subscribers who have iPhones will be able to watch movies-in-chapters like “Most Dangerous Game” and shows like “Chrissy’s Court” on TV screens. (Android users will have to wait a few more weeks.)
Also coming soon, Mr. Katzenberg said: Quibi will be less walled off from the internet, and users will be able to share its content on social media platforms.
But, of course, even there, Katzenberg plays down the importance of these kinds of things, suggesting that Quibi got this all "mostly right" and they're just fixing a few small issues, ignoring that these few small issues were the kinds of things that make or break an internet product.
“There are a whole bunch of things we have now seen in the product that we thought we got mostly right,” he said, “but now that there are hundreds of people on there using it, you go, ‘Uh-oh, we didn’t see that.’”
It's one thing not to see a unique product feature that might be nice, but not realizing that community and sharing would be important is not a small miss. That's pretty much the ballgame for a new consumer service these days. Katzenberg, though, has that traditional Hollywood broadcast mind of "we, the rich and powerful, make the content, and you the lowly public consumes the content." But that's not what people want and it's not want people have wanted in ages -- and it's why Hollywood keeps getting this wrong over and over again.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: blame, covid-19, hollywood, jeffrey katzenberg, streaming
Companies: quibi
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
No see, if you 'own it' that requires accepting blame
'The global pandemic that's caused people to stay at home and desperately look for something to keep them entertained is responsible for the failure of our streaming service' has got to be both the funniest and most pathetic excuse I've seen all month. In true arrogant jackass format rather than acknowledge that the launch was a joke and the product was as well he decided to go the 'blame anything but myself/my product, and get angry at anyone who says otherwise' route, which I'm sure will really help out the struggling platform.
As for the idea that there was no way to realize that basic features like screenshots and being able to watch on different devices was something people might want to have I can't help but be reminded of the Epic store, who also tried that excuse, and it was no less flawed then as now.
If you're the first on the scene then yeah, it's expected that you'll fumble around a bit and that it might take a bit to introduce features that in hindsight are blatantly obvious, however when you're entering a field already well developed that excuse ceases to be viable. The ability to share and watch on different devices is really a no-brainer at this point, and they have no valid excuse to only now be adding those in, especially given how much money they threw at the platform/content.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Jeffrey may have revealed more about Quibi than he meant to reveal with that.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
*"Am I so out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong" meme*
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
"What did Netflix look like 30 days after it launched?"
I'd be interested in those figures, but they were restricted to US only, while I believe Quibi is worldwide so it's not apples to apples, even if you factor in the surrounding data such as Netflix users being allowed to go to cinemas, concerts and all the other things they can't do now.
"“There are a whole bunch of things we have now seen in the product that we thought we got mostly right,” he said, “but now that there are hundreds of people on there using it, you go, ‘Uh-oh, we didn’t see that.’”"
I'm not sure what's funnier - the fact that they're implying they haven't got 1000 users yet, or that they didn't test the product with actual use cases before launch.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
"I'm not sure what's funnier - the fact that they're implying they haven't got 1000 users yet, or that they didn't test the product with actual use cases before launch."
Gets a bit less funny when you consider that everyone involved, including Katzenberg, has already been very well paid for this. What it looks like to me is a fraud job meant to lift money out of the pockets of gullible investors, whitewashed using the latest "streaming - best thing since sliced bread" hype until no court would be able to prove mens rea.
It is, of course, plausible, given that the copyright cult is involved, that it's just another case of gross ineptitude and general ignorance of what the customers want and need...but in this case Hanlon's Razor has to contend with the classical blueprints of a pump-and-dump scheme so old it was known in the Roman Republic.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
"What it looks like to me is a fraud job meant to lift money out of the pockets of gullible investors"
I'm not so convinced of that. Katzenberg has a net worth of $900 million, yet most of that was gained in the pre-digital era. He's been pushing a number of new projects in recent years, mainly behind the scenes stuff, this is just the one he has been a visible face of. He's has a number of successful projects over the years, and they have largely been characterised by people telling him he was making a mistake until the success became apparent.
It's far more likely to me that this is a genuinely misjudged product, that's been hampered a weak rollout that's brought the many flaws of the product to light in a severe way. The basic product idea is fairly sound if you look at it from the point of view of someone who only understands the market in rough terms. Short-form content is a general trend, mobile-focussed interaction is a thing, and so on. It's only when you look at it from the point of view of a 21st century user rather than a 20th century marketer that it becomes obvious.
It's not impossible that it's a producers-like scam, but I think it's more likely that a dinosaur who's used to being right not realising how prehistorically wrong he was until the public could do so.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
"It's not impossible that it's a producers-like scam, but I think it's more likely that a dinosaur who's used to being right not realising how prehistorically wrong he was until the public could do so."
You do make a lot of sense and I can't fault your logic.
It's just that when I read the details about Quibi in the OP my brand new #5 Hanlon's Razor exploded. It was the "rugged" edition, too... :(
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
I think you found the secret, Quibi is a remake of The Producers. Seriously, after a decade of streaming video services starting one this inept speaks of either cluelessness or duplicity, although the recent events at the remains of Gawker show cluelessness is a possibility.
To blame a worldwide "stay at home and watch TV" order for the failure of a streaming service is like blaming the Obama administration for the failure of your gun business, or blaming summer for slow air conditioner sales.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
Again, I don't think it's a scam, it's just a basic failure to understand an audience. The Quibi model of tying everything to non-interactive short-term content on mobile devices without the ability to share elsewhere was definitely a bad one, but I can see how an out-of-touch executive might think it was a good idea.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Put the blame where it belongs
Sometimes ideas fail only because they suck.
Katzenberg, your idea is bad, you're bad and you should feel bad.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Put the blame where it belongs
"Katzenberg, your idea is bad, you're bad and you should feel bad."
From another perspective;
His idea was "Being Given Money". This has been accomplished.
The rest can be answered with "Sticks and stones, eh".
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Cognitive dissonance?
He said it correctly (... he said. “I don’t know what people are expecting from us") but doesn't see that irony.
Maybe if he found out what people ARE expecting, he'd do better?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Cognitive dissonance?
Indeed. From what I can gather, he's launched a product that tries pushing a short-form TV show into a market where people are increasingly binge watching entire seasons, and restricts the viewing to a small number of pre-approved devices in a market where the expectation is to have every device supported, all depending on non-user generated content that nobody's ever heard of.
Even without the pandemic and the sudden explosion of things like Tik Tok that grabbed the short-form content attention, this would seem to be a risky venture.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Cognitive dissonance?
Market research, what's that?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
never heard of any of them before
Jeffrey Katzenberg
Quibi
Most Dangerous Game
Chrissy's Court
people really watching something called Chrissy's Court? seriously?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: never heard of any of them before
People watch Judge Judy.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: never heard of any of them before
Wow, I get a couple of these but is Google really that hard, because some of these are not unknown things..
"Jeffrey Katzenberg"
The CEO of Disney during its resurge in quality animation in the early 90s, who then went on to co-found Dreamworks Animation (in the original name of the head company Dreamworks SKG, he's the K).
"Quibi"
His latest venture, which has had a disastrous launch.
"Most Dangerous Game"
A novel from 1924 which was adapted into a classic film by the same name in 1932, and whose basic construct has been used for everything from Hard Target to The Hunt, and whose latest adaptation is on Quibi.
"Chrissy's Court"
I admit I had to check this one, it's a celebrity vanity project for Chrissy Teigan, not my sort of thing but I'm sure there's a market for it on a platform that gets viewers.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: never heard of any of them before
Even after lookin gup Quibi on wikipedia, still no interest in checking it out. Sounded like a new streaming platform that is "less" capable than what's already out there.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: never heard of any of them before
A well-written story doesn't require the reader to Google multiple terms, or follow links to previous stories, to get a basic understanding. I'd also never heard of Quibi, and didn't know Katzenberg's connection to it. So, let's try that opening again: "A few weeks back, we went into detail on why Quibi, a video service promoted by (?) film studio executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, was such a total disaster from Day 1".
Keep in mind that if people had actually heard of Quibi, Mike wouldn't have had to write this story.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: never heard of any of them before
"I'd also never heard of Quibi, and didn't know Katzenberg's connection to it"
The story literally says this, and linked you to the previous story where the issue is talked about in more detail in case you haven't caught up yet.:
"the mastermind behind the clusterfuck, Jeffrey Katzenberg (formerly of Disney and Dreamworks)"
How much did you need to be spoon fed to you before you wrote a post that's 10x bigger than the relevant search words?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: never heard of any of them before
A well-written story doesn't require the reader to Google multiple terms, or follow links to previous stories, to get a basic understanding.
Unlike some sites, we assume our readers don't need to be spoonfed every last detail every time we write about something that has been covered widely elsewhere. We assume some familiarity, or the ability of intelligent readers to read up elsewhere on anything else necessary so we can focus in on the crux of what we're talking about.
Perhaps our site is not right for you if you want to be spoonfed.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: never heard of any of them before
You post like 10-20 stories a day. Do you really expect readers to be Googling several terms from each? I don't expect you to explain what Chrissy's Court is, even who Katzenberg is ("formerly of Disney and Dreamworks" is sufficient), but I don't believe it's "spoonfeeding" to say that Quibi is a streaming service nobody's heard of. Rather, that is the crux of this story.
The headline and first paragraph should at least give potential readers some idea of what the post will be about and whether it may be of interest. You're usually pretty good about that.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: never heard of any of them before
"Do you really expect readers to be Googling several terms from each?"
No, he expects you to either be familiar with the basics of an ongoing story that's been talked about here already, or click on the provided link that explains the basics without having to retype it every time for the lazy.
So far, you have expended many times more energy whining about the fact you haven't been fed the information like an infant than it would have taken you to read what was already provided.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: never heard of any of them before
Jeffrey Katzenberg was never the CEO of Disney.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Netflix numbers
After a bit of a search I was not able to find the first 30 days numbers. However I was able to find first year numbers which was 239k members.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Netflix numbers
As I've mentioned above, any comparison should take into account that Netflix streaming was not available outside the US for the first 2 years so while they will have had a boost from the existing DVD service subscribers knowing it as a household name, they had a much smaller market at launch.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
What would be interesting..
is a composite program that would look at the net and gather all those sites together to be played on 1 program..
Charge a small fee for this, because you dont need the servers, as other have done most of the work.
Become the NEW internet cable TV company. With access to everything, as well as the old stuff that hasnt been seen in years.
But the idea that Listening to others to create something, is irrational to Many of these people.
How many people would use the net for a Full access video source? Or have done already. Its just trying to get them all together in 1 app/program/access.
And as YT does, reformat it into all the forms needed..
LOTS of work. But consider that many of the corps have a good selection already online, but NOT with 1 access program for them all.
Being the first, works, figuring it out is the hard part.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Just No
You know why I for one didn't have anything to do with it?
For a start, saturation adverts. If you maybe tell me about it once, I might check out what it is and see if its interesting.
If you're constantly fucking ramming it down my throat, no, I don't want it, and FUCKING SHUT UP ABOUT IT!
I aint going to even consider it, because I'm SO sick to death of hearing about it I don't want to go anywhere near it.
The more you bug me to "take you to Mount Splashmore", the more likely I am to burn your bathing suits, and traumatize you against pools.
Second, the format - I don't want to watch short video 'vertically', it's ANNOYING. "Gee, what's the worst thing about badly made videos" "shooting vertically" "Lets make a platform around that!"
Finally, going 'full peloton' on me is a bad idea.
trying to tell me how edgy, hip and cool you are, and how many stars you have tells me one thing - you have a shit product and you're trying to wow me with superficialities, and hint to me that its cool, and i'd be cool if I watched it.
I'm not 5. It may work on your joey Essex's but not me.
Worse, it's not actually 'cool', it's some old executives idea of cool. It's full Steve buscemi with a skateboard 'cool'.
So to summarize, he pissed away a shit-ton a money, annoying his potential market with shitty adverts that were bad 'fake cool' to promote pretty poor products that could only be marketed on the basis of fake-cool.
But that's all TOTALLY Covid...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Just No
"For a start, saturation adverts."
The fun thing is, despite the app being available where I live, I've never seen an ad for it. In fact, the first time I heard of it was when a podcast I listen to was talking about how this seems to have failed and they all mentioned being constantly barraged with ads. Their targeting seems to be way off.
Although I do agree with your sentiment. A while back I was researching the best CI/CD platform to use for my company's workflow. I started seeing constant ads between YouTube videos for one of the choices, which led to me being so sick of them I made sure to choose someone else. They would only have been a runner up in the actual procurement, but the ads made me ensure they weren't on the final shortlist.
"Second, the format - I don't want to watch short video 'vertically', it's ANNOYING"
One of the fundamental failures with this service seems to be that they wish to dictate to you how you watch their content rather than giving you the choice, whereas all their main competitors try to offer as many options as possible.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
It sure is.
I would take a "quick bite" of an apple, not a "quick bite" of a submarine.
Also, apples float to the top while submarines are usually underwater.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Doomed from the start
When you name your billion dollar albatross, you might not want to use a name that sounds like your three year olds doll.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
We own it
They don't mean they own the mistake. Ownership culture: they believe Holywood owns the coronavirus (because someone has to, right?)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
UltraViolet
It looks like they learned all the lessons from the failure of UltraViolet and promptly threw them in the trash.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Yeah, sure...
Of course I'd want to pay a monthly fee to be able to watch a couple of minutes of ads along with a couple of minutes of "quality programming" like "Chrissy's Court". (No, I wouldn't). The entire premise of this company is ludicrous. Then, it being helmed by Meg Whitman makes it even more of a debacle. Ugh.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
A Non-Starter To Begin With
Quibi is fundamentally a non-started before you even get to the lack of sharability and casting to the TV, and would have struggled with or without the pandemic. They completely misunderstood the audience to begin with.
1) The app was pitched as a way of killing stray moments of time. Five minutes here, ten minutes there. Or for commutes, if one is taking the bus or the train. But that’s way too specific a usage to prescribe. And aren’t most commuters in the US driving?
There are already a ton of options for that. YouTube alone has endless amounts of video. There's also Snapchat, Tiktok, social media, podcasts, games, etc. Most of this is FREE. Getting people to pay for Quibi was always going to be an uphill battle. MAYBE would give these shows a shot if they were free or if they were on a platform they already subscribe to (Hulu, Netflix, etc.)
2 ) Short content is not novel! It’s been around forever, and it’s not even something people are seeking out specifically. If I have a few minutes to kill, I don’t need the content to be short enough so that I can finish it within that time. I can listen to 10 minutes of an hour-long podcast, for example.
3) The content itself is all wrong. Their shows are the kind of thing you can see on network TV, basic cable, or other streamers, with lots of Hollywood celebrities and slick production values. This is exactly the kind of thing young people have been ESCAPING when they watch YouTube, Tiktok, etc.
4) No killer app on the app. Nothing about the user experience is especially novel or interactive. Turnstile, who cares? Nothing about the content has grabbed the zeitgeist. If anything people are MOCKING these shows and the app itself. The show concepts are like the shows “30 Rock” and other comedies made up to make fun of bad TV, and people are comparing the very concept of Quibi itself to the “30 Rock” joke about 10-second internet sitcoms.
They were hoping to make a ton of money on content short enough to skirt SAG and other union minimums, but they didn’t foresee that people weren’t interested in their content and that their business model was bad.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: A Non-Starter To Begin With
"They were hoping to make a ton of money on content short enough to skirt SAG and other union minimums"
Unless you can link me to something that says otherwise, I don't think that SAG rules depend on the length of the edited final product.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: A Non-Starter To Begin With
I think you are right about SAG and length of the final product, but SAG's guidelines are partly based on budget, so the budget for a movie or TV show can be divided by the number of shorter episodes. WGA, however, takes length of the final product into consideration.
https://twitter.com/VanTheBrand/status/1101932865212755968
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: A Non-Starter To Begin With
OK, thanks for the cite, that seems... strange, given that surely a day on set is a day on set no matter what the end product is but now I know it exists.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
"...surely a day on set is a day on set no matter what the end product is..."
...unless one of the negotiating partners is the industry which made the phrase "Hollywood accounting" infamous. I can imagine there's some benefit to taking the length of the final product into consideration - especially as one of the reasons given for the founding of the Screen Actor's Guild was hollywood studios locking actors into indefinite contracts with bad non-negotiable remuneration for neverending shows.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
I can imagine something like that but it is just weird unless they're deliberately trying to pay TV crew less by default (which is possible). It's just that the work day does not reflect what goes into the final product. Roger Corman could shoot an entire movie in 2 days but Stanley Kubrick might spend that time trying to get a single shot, yet I'm sure the guys on the latter shoot got paid more...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
"It's just that the work day does not reflect what goes into the final product. "
You are seriously assigning logical motive to the people whose logic includes the "starving artist", "copying is theft", and "a lost sale is lost money"?
I agree with you that it makes no common sense at all. Thus it either makes much sense in the form of fiscal shenanigans - tax evasion or borderline fraud - which is that one area where hollywood CEO's truly shine.
"Obviously" a day on set working on a movie intended to bring the box office audience on knee-crawling pilgrimages across statelines is priced differently than, say, working a day on a commissioned documentary of no interest to anyone but school teahcers and nerds. It's just like the plumber will suddenly get paid differently when the pipes he's working on lead to the toilet belonging to the rich bigshot in apartment number 5 (/s).
By now I just assume every time Tinseltown does something not immediately understandable the goal is either to extort someone, pick someone's pocket, or hide the money where the IRS can't find it. No business like show business. Not even the cartels whose business model comes the closest.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]