Vanities / Letter From L.A.
CAN JEFFREY KATZENBERG and Meg
Whitman make Quibi a noun? Sitting
in their offices in Hollywood, the duo
drops the name of their company
into the conversation as if it’s already
a household word and not a goofy-
sounding portmanteau of “quick bites.”
As media conglomerates scramble
to stake their claim in the new
streaming world order, Quibi looks like
an underdog, albeit a heavily funded
one run by former head of Disney and
DreamWorks Katzenberg and ex–
Hewlett Packard CEO Whitman. The
pair have already raised $1.4billion
to launch their upstart: a streaming
service dedicated to high-quality short-
form series (episodes of 10minutes or
less) made to be watched on your phone.
While other executives are zigging in
pursuit of the next big show, Quibi is
zagging toward a market for miniatures
that doesn’t yet exist.
“This is a big, big risk, and I’m not
sure we’ve really seen the likes of this
in quite a while,” says Andrew Hare of
research and consulting firm Magid.
But, he adds, “They’re taking a giant
swing at the plate.”
Set to launch April 6, Quibi is
creating 8,500 episodes in year one:
scripted fare from filmmakers like
Steven Spielberg, Antoine Fuqua, Mary
Harron, the Farrelly brothers, and
Guillermo del Toro, as well as daily news.
But its unscripted shows triggered the
most merriment on social media: There’s
a small-claims court presided over by
Chrissy Teigen; a cooking competition
called Dishmantled in which blindfolded
chefs have food blasted at them with
a cannon; Potty Talk, with designer
Alexander Wang chatting to celebs in
bathrooms; and more. Quibi’s brand is
self-mocking, as befits the TikTok-loving
millennial and Gen Z viewers they’re
courting. For a while their Twitter
display name read “WTFisQuibi.”
Whitman says that with 18- to
44-year-olds spending roughly six hours
a day on their phones, there’s plenty
of time for them to “carve out a couple of
Quibis for us.” Ideally, TikTok and
YouTube could turn into a farm team
for talent coveting Quibi’s production
values. The big names already on board
were drawn in part by the unusual
deal structure: Quibi licenses material
for seven years, after which the show’s
creators own it; and after just two
years, creators can combine the short-
form episodes and sell them elsewhere.
Add to that the thrill of
experimentation. “We can’t say, ‘Don’t
use this lighting’ or ‘Don’t shoot
with these lenses,’ ” Katzenberg says,
“because nobody actually knows yet.
So everybody had to just be driven
pretty much by their instincts.” Quibi’s
trademark innovation is Turnstyle
technology: Shows are shot in both
portrait and landscape modes, and
the video seamlessly switches between
them whenever you rotate your phone.
The effect can be subtle (close-up versus
panorama) or dramatic (in the series
Wireless, one view focuses on a college
kid stranded in a blizzard, while the
other shows us his panicked activity on
his dying cell phone). Directors like
Catherine Hardwicke and Doug Liman
served as guinea pigs, testing Turnstyle’s
boundaries. Early on, Hardwicke
recalls, “We tried to do all kinds of neat
things—all different kinds of cameras
and lenses, and shooting vertical in the
morning and horizontal in the afternoon.”
Constant innovation is the plan,
using viewer data to understand how
people interact with the programming.
But what does success look like for
a company with neither a household
name nor deep corporate pockets? Hare
suggests everyone’s going to want to
see big subscriber numbers out of the
gate. He gives Katzenberg and Whitman
kudos for doing something original
but wonders, “How long are they going
to be able to keep taking on debt?”
As for critics who complain that Quibi
will further degrade attention spans,
Whitman says, “When you watch a show
in Turnstyle with your headphones,
I would actually argue this is higher
attention than a television set in
your living room,” where people are
walking in and out, and you have
your phone in one hand anyway. Quibi
is “immersive and singular,” she adds,
“which is why we will have only one
stream per subscriber.” So no account
sharing. Each household member must
cough up $4.99 per month, or $7.99
without ads, though T-Mobile users get
the first year free.
Whitman knows their platform
may spur others to jump on the brevity
bandwagon but points out that other
platforms aren’t designed to be watched
on—and take advantage of—mobile
technology: “There’s short form and
then there’s Quibi.” n
C
Countdown
to QUIBI
Jeffrey Katzenberg and
Meg Whitman are poised to
launch a unique (and risky)
new streamer By Joy Press
The plat for m’s
name is short for
QUICK BITES.
While other execs
zig in pursuit of the
NEXT BIG SHOW,
Quibi will zag
toward a market for
MINIATURES that
doesn’t yet exist.
VANITY FAIR MARCH 2020
