Quibi in Trouble

ahalpert

ahalpert

Major Contributor
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/jun/28/quibi-netflix-jeffrey-katzenberg-crash

Quibi is blaming its woes on the pandemic. But come on - streaming viewership has gone up, not down.

Personally, I don't think there's much room for narrative content under 20-30 minutes episodic or 60 minutes standalone.

How much story can you develop in 10 minutes? I don't watch short films for entertainment. I don't really enjoy them.

If you want to watch a TV show in 10-minute segments, you can just hit pause and pick it up later.

If you want 5-minute make-up or cooking tutorials, you can go on YouTube.

Am I wrong? Does anyone else think Quibi fills a niche for viewers?
 
Their dumbest mistake was not allowing streaming to a TV. Why they did that I don't understand.
 
Quibi only had a niche for people on the go. I. Particular commuters with some time to kill. That was definitely wiled out by the pandemic, not just in the US, but across the globe. So, they went from a having a small chance, to pretty much no chance. Just bad timing for them.

But traditional theaters got hit even worse, so......
 
Back in 1992, Larry David and Larry Charles were hiking in Runyon Park in Hollywood Hills and pondering sitcom's structural design. It was then a fairly standard time allotment to the premise, story beats and resolution, with the main difference being a dual (A and B) story or a single/A story structure. But LC suggested that, given the show four acting stars/characters, they could try four stories per a 21/22 minute episode. Which is what they began doing around 1993, with LC soon leaving the program to become the show-runner on "Mad about you". In that sense, it is unknown whether the show would have retained its quality, as LC is a brilliant writer and his replacements were not. Subsequently, LD also left and Jerry became the sole decider over what went in and what didn't. I happen to loathe the show from that point on but that's exactly when it became immensely popular with the mass audience, despite a prevailing feeling among the insiders that it really was turning into crap.

In any case, if one wonders about 5 minute story lines, then they can be and have been done. Anton Chekhov, the greatest short story writer in history, wrote a bunch of de facto 5-minute plays. The question is the number of Chekhov quality writers on Quibi's payroll. The other question is whether short films rather than short comedy bits or interview excerpts ought to be Quibi's main share of content. And the third is whether Quibi can compete against the deep pocketed mainstream type services like Netflix, Amazon, Disney and Apple in the long run to begin with.

We'll find out soon enough.
 
I want longer shows, not shorter, chopped-up versions. That's one of the things I like about the high quality episodics on the streaming services, there's time to develop and tell a good/great story.
 
Interesting take, DLD. Quibi has some deep-pocketed investors.

I haven't read Chekhov's short plays.

I'd argue that comedy or music videos, for example, deliver a type of spectacle that can almost exist in stasis. I don't think the need for long and deep arc development is there.

And those 5-minute Seinfeld arcs are intertwined with one another. I think that helps build the complexity in your mind (plus the fact that they all end up colliding). If you were to cut out all the Elaine scenes and watch them in order without the other stuff, it might be moderately less entertaining than within the flow and rhythm of the larger piece. (Just like in a feature or whatever you cycle back and forth between characters/subplots.)
 
I blame a lack of marketing. I have honestly never heard of Quibi before. This thread is the first I have ever even heard of it. Thats saying a lot coming from a person that did live video streaming for a living. If I never heard of it I'm pretty sure a lot of other people have never heard of it either.
 
Yeah they were only a blip on my radar - but I know I've read about them multiple times in the news. Never bothered to actually check it out tho
 
ahalpert said:
Interesting take, DLD. Quibi has some deep-pocketed investors.

I haven't read Chekhov's short plays.

I'd argue that comedy or music videos, for example, deliver a type of spectacle that can almost exist in stasis. I don't think the need for long and deep arc development is there.

And those 5-minute Seinfeld arcs are intertwined with one another. I think that helps build the complexity in your mind (plus the fact that they all end up colliding). If you were to cut out all the Elaine scenes and watch them in order without the other stuff, it might be moderately less entertaining than within the flow and rhythm of the larger piece. (Just like in a feature or whatever you cycle back and forth between characters/subplots.)
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A) Deep pocketed investor will limit their losses, if the business goes into a toilet.

But enough about Olympus.

B) Chekhov wrote mostly short stories, many of which have been filmed. I recall one short/mini play he wrote. There may be others.

And, I guess, more than one.


C) For the last couple of months I've watched a bunch of interviews by a Ukrainian journalist/talk show host Dimitri Gordon. He also provides a lot of self-contained short clips/excerpts to his older broadcasts. I found the shorts very well done, even as my attention span isn't sufficient for an hour long program.

D) Yes, the Seinfeld 4-stories intersected, with endings one could often see ten minutes ahead. My favorites were mostly the Larry Charles penned episodes like "The Heart Attack", "The Limo", "The Keys", "The Trip", "The Outing", "The Bris", "The Fix-up", etc. Most of those were a single story shows.
 
One thing about Chekhov, it looks like even his short stories could be made into feature-length films, such as this one - https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/27/movies/27ward.html

A feature film contains less plot than an average-length novel. So, I suppose that some (or most) short stories could be made into features. Sometimes novel adaptations even feel like they're cramming too much into a 2-hour space.

I guess that's why I feel like a 5- or 10-minute movie makes so little of an impression on me. Or the theme is hitting me over the head.

But I should check out more Chekhov...

I saw some short films I really liked in the Short Treks series on CBS. But they all piggybacked off characters and a setting (Star Trek: Discovery) that was thoroughly fleshed out and presumably known to the viewer already.

The best was The Escape Artist starring the hilarious Rainn Wilson. I don't know if he'll ever escape the shadow of Dwight Schrute but damn is he funny. I watched it 3 times and I've been quoting my favorite lines from that short for weeks, much to my wife's chagrin.
 
"Van'ka" (soft "n") is one of the most famous Chekov short stories and seems to be reasonably translated (often Chekhov's prose is bungled badly). It's also been filmed.

http://www.free-short-stories.org.uk/anton-chekhov-vanka.htm

Here's 1959 Soviet 30 min short based on it. (have to click on CC for subtitles, then translate in English, although the story line ought to be fairly clear from the story)



And here's a Soviet 8-min 1981 animated short.


OK, the auto-translation suck.

And, as a side note, sketch comedy shows - whether "Your Show of Shows", "Rowan and Martin's Laugh In" or SNL - is a collection of shorts.
 
Thomas Smet said:
I blame a lack of marketing. I have honestly never heard of Quibi before. This thread is the first I have ever even heard of it. Thats saying a lot coming from a person that did live video streaming for a living. If I never heard of it I'm pretty sure a lot of other people have never heard of it either.
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At least around here, I saw lots of TV ads for them leading into their launch. And then nothing... Why lift your foot off the accelerator as soon as the green flag flies...?
 
DLD said:
... And, as a side note, sketch comedy shows - whether "Your Show of Shows", "Rowan and Martin's Laugh In" or SNL - is a collection of shorts.
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It's odd to have brought up "You Show of Shows" only to discover that Carl Reiner, who earned his first fame on that program, passed away at roughly the time of that post.

Carl had a nice run though. He was 98.
 
puredrifting said:
I had never even heard of Quibi befpore this thread. Sounds like an economically unviable idea to me.
We have YouTube and Vimeo, why would we need to pay to watch shorts?
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I completely agree with you. But to answer your question, I think their business model was rooted in building an exclusive library of celebrity-rich content. (Eg if you want to watch the Chrissy Teigen courtroom show, you NEED Quibi.)

But I think the reality it that is was founded by two Silicon Valley bigwigs with a bad idea who never would have gotten it going without their billionaire investor connections
 
ahalpert said:
I completely agree with you. But to answer your question, I think their business model was rooted in building an exclusive library of celebrity-rich content. (Eg if you want to watch the Chrissy Teigen courtroom show, you NEED Quibi.)

But I think the reality it that is was founded by two Silicon Valley bigwigs with a bad idea who never would have gotten it going without their billionaire investor connections
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Abe for the win.
 
A little known tidbit in their corporate filing. Originally, the company was going to be called CatB and show nothing but cat videos.
 
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