Quibi in Trouble

I know that people lost their jobs, and I'm sad about that. But I'm 0% surprised. and to add insult to injury, not only did no one want to buy quibi, nobody even wants to pick up their content...
 
I don't really like to be a negative Nancy, but some business ventures just seems way to stupid to make money. I don't know anyone that really watches short form, even at the film schools I attended people wouldn't really bother "watching them" (even though we were all making them as well), and nobody would certainly pay for it. The equivalent would be a 30 sec only Spotify-subscription with songs only being max 30 sec, who would buy that? Sure there is a huge need for songs that are 30 sec (commercials, etc.) but nobody wants to "consume" that. Quibi could have worked 15 years ago pre-youtube and pre-netflix, but now it is way, way, way too much of a niche market to warrant its existence in "main stream".
 
I like short-form, but the problem for them is that most can get it on YouTube.

Not exclusive content but enough from various interests to be content.
 
NorBro said:
I like short-form, but the problem for them is that most can get it on YouTube.

Not exclusive content but enough from various interests to be content.
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Exactly, and that's why I mean, this could have been quite OK prior to youtube, but right now it is such a limited upgrade than what you basically get for free. I remember the days I was in film school, 2004-2010, I really wanted to watch some "best short winner", but good luck getting a hold of them. Now and then I could get a hold of a winner or nominated short, but not really enough to see where the "bar" was for short films, eventually I saw that the majority of "good shorts" also had pretty fat budgets, I mean they had maybe like 10-40k $ budgets, and what was being "upheld as good" was polished turds rather than original/good storytelling. Of course some exceptions, I remember one short that worked as proof of concept that later became a pretty good long form, Cashback 2004 nominated best short, 2006 long version.
 
It doesn't seem too likely that Quibi's demise is due to bad timing as a result of the pandemic either. Apparently nearly half of households worldwide have subscribed to at least one new streaming service in the past 6 months:
https://www.limelight.com/resources/market-research/state-of-online-video-2020/#nearly

So in many ways it has been a better time than ever to launch a subscription streaming service. But evidently they were not subscribing to Quibi, but likely joined one of the new services with much better established content libraries such as Disney+, HBO Max, or Peacock or some of the better established existing offerings like Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime Video.

One thing that I do find kind of interesting, is that the 30 minute or 60 minute forms for episodic scripted content seems to be largely a historical artifact of the needs of broadcast television schedules. And the while episode lengths due tend to vary somewhat for shows delivered via streaming services, it seems like for the most part they tend to gravitate toward roughly 30 or 60 minute episodes. There are not a ton of examples (that I can come up with anyway) of really successful short-form scripted, episodic content. Even though there is nothing stopping any of the streaming services from producing such content. Even on YouTube, which has a ton of short form videos, there isn't really much in the way of traditional scripted content.

So I'm not really sure what to attribute this to. Is it just because we are in a transitional period away from broadcast television right now, so people are still adapting to the new medium, and eventually we will see lots of content of all different lengths? Are shorter formats just hard to make work from a storytelling perspective? Or is it something else entirely?
 
davedv said:
It doesn't seem too likely that Quibi's demise is due to bad timing as a result of the pandemic either. Apparently nearly half of households worldwide have subscribed to at least one new streaming service in the past 6 months:
https://www.limelight.com/resources/market-research/state-of-online-video-2020/#nearly

So in many ways it has been a better time than ever to launch a subscription streaming service. But evidently they were not subscribing to Quibi, but likely joined one of the new services with much better established content libraries such as Disney+, HBO Max, or Peacock or some of the better established existing offerings like Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime Video.

One thing that I do find kind of interesting, is that the 30 minute or 60 minute forms for episodic scripted content seems to be largely a historical artifact of the needs of broadcast television schedules. And the while episode lengths due tend to vary somewhat for shows delivered via streaming services, it seems like for the most part they tend to gravitate toward roughly 30 or 60 minute episodes. There are not a ton of examples (that I can come up with anyway) of really successful short-form scripted, episodic content. Even though there is nothing stopping any of the streaming services from producing such content. Even on YouTube, which has a ton of short form videos, there isn't really much in the way of traditional scripted content.

So I'm not really sure what to attribute this to. Is it just because we are in a transitional period away from broadcast television right now, so people are still adapting to the new medium, and eventually we will see lots of content of all different lengths? Are shorter formats just hard to make work from a storytelling perspective? Or is it something else entirely?
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I think short form kind of sucks. I mean, you could break up a longer story into short chunks. I'm rewatching star trek Voyager now and, like all commercially-interrupted shows, it ends with a dramatic beat or mini-cliffhanger before fading to commercial breaks and then has some expository dialogue to reestablish the scenario after it fades back in. Every chunk between commercial breaks could be an "episode" right? But yeah, I dont think you can satisfyingly tell much story in less than 15 minutes. Give yourself a half hour or an hour and you can go into more depth and have multiple subplots. Look at how much more plot your typical written short story has. as much as a feature. And a full-length novel always strains the feature format. They did the hobbit in 3 movies and that was a children's book.

Quibi's supposed excuse was that it was designed for commuters. Straphangers could watch a full episode or two on the train and then chat about it around the water cooler. So they claimed that remote work killed them. I'm not so sure.

I think that sticking to 30- and 60-minute episodes (but wasn't it really 23 and 46?) Is a holdover from the previous era, for both writers/producers and audiences. There may be more variety of durations coming. But maybe not - I think that people like consistent, predictable chunks of time. Many online newspapers post the average reading time of an article next to the headline so you can decide if you're willing to invest that much time in the topic, ha.

Tangentially, I feel like 3-hour long movies are almost always too long to sit through.
 
ahalpert said:
I think short form kind of sucks. I mean, you could break up a longer story into short chunks. I'm rewatching star trek Voyager now and, like all commercially-interrupted shows, it ends with a dramatic beat or mini-cliffhanger before fading to commercial breaks and then has some expository dialogue to reestablish the scenario after it fades back in. Every chunk between commercial breaks could be an "episode" right? But yeah, I dont think you can satisfyingly tell much story in less than 15 minutes. Give yourself a half hour or an hour and you can go into more depth and have multiple subplots. Look at how much more plot your typical written short story has. as much as a feature. And a full-length novel always strains the feature format. They did the hobbit in 3 movies and that was a children's book.

Quibi's supposed excuse was that it was designed for commuters. Straphangers could watch a full episode or two on the train and then chat about it around the water cooler. So they claimed that remote work killed them. I'm not so sure.

I think that sticking to 30- and 60-minute episodes (but wasn't it really 23 and 46?) Is a holdover from the previous era, for both writers/producers and audiences. There may be more variety of durations coming. But maybe not - I think that people like consistent, predictable chunks of time. Many online newspapers post the average reading time of an article next to the headline so you can decide if you're willing to invest that much time in the topic, ha.

Tangentially, I feel like 3-hour long movies are almost always too long to sit through.
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Have you seen prison break on netflix? It feels like every few minutes it fades to black for what surely would have been way too many commercials when it was on regular TV..
 
rob norton said:
Have you seen prison break on netflix? It feels like every few minutes it fades to black for what surely would have been way too many commercials when it was on regular TV..
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I haven't seen it but I know that it originally aired on broadcast. What's the implication? Is it just their particular style? Are they trying to make it super dramatic with the extra fade outs? Is the show any good?
 
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rob norton said:
Have you seen prison break on netflix? It feels like every few minutes it fades to black for what surely would have been way too many commercials when it was on regular TV..
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On the flip side: Swamp Thing on the CW here in the US was originally shot for the DC streaming service and it’s just as bad, because they have to censor a lot of the dialogue that can’t air on broadcast and the cuts to commercial break are super awkward, because it wasn’t written/made with them in-mind, since there were never going to be any.
 
ahalpert said:
I haven't seen it but I know that it originally aired on broadcast. What's the implication? Is it just their particular style? Are they trying to make it super dramatic with the fade outside? Is the show any good?
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I haven’t seen the follow-up(Dan was there for the BTS), but the original run of the series was very good. At least the first few seasons.
 
Run&Gun said:
On the flip side: Swamp Thing on the CW here in the US was originally shot for the DC streaming service and it’s just as bad, because they have to censor a lot of the dialogue that can’t air on broadcast and the cuts to commercial break are super awkward, because it wasn’t written/made with them in-mind, since there were never going to be any.
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Haha that sucks. I just checked out a few swamp thing trailers on YT, looks like it's competing with ozark for the bluest show on TV!
 
ahalpert said:
I haven't seen it but I know that it originally aired on broadcast. What's the implication? Is it just their particular style? Are they trying to make it super dramatic with the extra fade outs? Is the show any good?
Click to expand...

They were probably playing by the rules re commercial breaks but it just emphasizes how ridiculous it was to watch some of these shows in "real time" back in the day.

For a recommendation, I've logged some serious hours of bad viewing over the years so I don't think I'm qualified to answer. We're talking springer, COPS, home improvement...
 
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Run&Gun said:
On the flip side: Swamp Thing on the CW here in the US was originally shot for the DC streaming service and it’s just as bad, because they have to censor a lot of the dialogue that can’t air on broadcast and the cuts to commercial break are super awkward, because it wasn’t written/made with them in-mind, since there were never going to be any.
Click to expand...

Yeah, this has to be one of the worst broadcast edits I've suffered through. The way they blur mouths when they censor dialogue is distracting, and the cuts to commercial happen almost randomly, sometimes a few frames into the next scene.

I've only seen two episodes but I think the show has potential. Apparently there is some talk about resurrecting the show for the CW or HBO MAX so we might see more of it.
 
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