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.
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.
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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
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.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Billy the Goat.
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