The Quibi team may have had trouble finding some poor sap to buy the underwhelming mobile-forward streaming service before its quick demise in December, but it appears that they are still able to rehome its recently abandoned content. Per The Wall Street Journal, the billion-dollar streamer is currently in “advanced talks” with Roku, Inc. who is potentially looking to buy the in-limbo library. Some of the details are still vague or unavailable, such as how much the deal would cost and the availability of all of the star-powered “quick bite” shows that the original plan had to offer (since some contracts might make the transition difficult, but not impossible, according to a source).
And while we tend to poke fun at the endeavor and its shortcomings (and c’mon, Jeffrey Katzenberg and friends blew through $1.75 billion in a matter of months, they can handle some teasing), this would actually amount to a pretty sweet haul for the Roku Channel, which would serve as the new home for all those displaced shows. Should the two parties actually strike a deal—and there’s still a chance that the whole thing could fall apart, according to WSJ—then all former Quibi content would be available exclusively on Roku’s dedicated channel, which currently offers syndicated titles. And while there may not a ton of demand for a comedy about a talking sex doll starring Anna Kendrick, there may be just enough curiosity among Roku users to tune in without having to pay a subscription fee.
Roku is aiming to bulk up its slate of offerings and with the help of its recent deals with HBO Max and NBCUniversal, it’s certainly on its way. This new potential agreement with Quibi can only help matters. The big question is: How soon can we expect to see the Reno 911! revival pop up on the device?
32 Comments
Okay.
And while there may not a ton of demand for a comedy about a talking sex doll starring Anna Kendrick…I was going to say that actually sounds like it could be good. Kendrick is lovable and I enjoyed Lars and the Real Girl. But then I watched the trailer and oof… That looks truly abysmal.
I would watch Anna Kendrick read the phone book terms of service, but not that Quibi nonsense.
I have not watched it, but my wife decided to give a Quibi trial a… well, try… and she really, really enjoyed that show. Anna Kendrick is just naturally so charming that I’m not surprised but she said it was very funny. If it winds up on Roku Channel, I may actually give it a look.
I would like to believe your wife has good taste since I like Anna Kendrick and it’s always better to have more good art in the world, but if those are the best jokes they could come up with for the trailer…
I mean on the one hand, she likes The Big Bang Theory. On the other hand, she married me. So her taste… oh, wait. Nevermind.
The big question is: How soon can we expect to see the Reno 911! pop up on the device? Yep! That’d be the only aspect of this…thing…that I give a shit about.
Well, I really want to see the “Murder, She Wrote” parody with Paula Pell …..
Well shit, now so do I!
There’s still a full episode on Youtube. It’s good!
Cool! Thanks!
Really? Good? I mean it is watchable and it resembles a poorly written 30 Rock dream sequence… but good?
Me too! I was telling my parents about it this weekend – it was the only show I wanted to try. We watch a lot of Murder, She Wrote reruns 🙂
I was really excited for it too but it really does not work. She’s great and a lot of the cast are funny but it all kid of falls flat. Plus the short format really does not do it any favours, taking an average 22 min sitcom and just slicing it into 3 pieces at the act breaks completely stunts the narrative and at the end of the day the whole season is just 4 regular episodes, which is really not enough time to tell any sort of full story.
Just bring back the damn half-hour series, someone! Those were as good as ever and if they have a fault it’s that they were too short!
Ideally this! And bring back the killed-off deputies, but NEVER explain it.
The Quibi revival DID bring back those characters, as I remember!
Also the Will Forte show was tops
So no one really seems to think that we needed the new content delivery paradigm that Quibi was offering, but I feel like if someone wanted to trial the idea anyway (after all, lots of now-commonplace things originally seemed like crazy ideas, and people are generally resistant to change), they could have done it smaller-scale than trying to launch a whole huge splashy service like Quibi. An existing streaming service could have quietly introduced a mobile branch with some content only available there, and see if people liked watching it that way enough for it to become a thing.
You mean ACTUAL market research!? GET OUT.
I thought something similar. Basically like Hulu has it’s “FX on Hulu” subcategory, and HBO Max has themed categories (like their DC or TCM ones), any streaming service could just create a “Quick Bites” category of videos that are 15 minutes or less (or whatever arbitrary length they want to give it).
That would assume any of the streamers ever thought this was a good idea. This was all about a big time Hollywood mogul trying to copy YouTube with high production value Hollywood weight behind it.“Hey the kids nowadays love short form video streamed on the web, let’s make some high quality content and charge them for it! We’ll make a bundle!”
Yeah, except it’s just a bad idea. Too short to tell a proper story, too long to be a quick thing to watch when you have a couple of minutes. Somehow counting on the assumption that people in the USA take mass transportation a lot more than they do (outside a very few cities) and want to watch a 10 minute piece of a drama when they do. It’s like the people who put it together were aiming it at a theoretical species of urban millennials who they’ve read about but may not actually exist.Maybe if the service was entirely aimed at little kids there would be something there (short content is fine for them, they’re passengers everywhere they go and would eat up 10-minute shows on mom’s phone) but for adults, I dunno.
To be fair, they happened to launch in a year when most young, urban professionals were forced to work from home, which isn’t their fault. Though I think you’re right that they weren’t going to succeed long term regardless.
As one of the co-founders of United Artists, you should be more supportive of shaking up existing paradigms!Anyway, I totally agree that it doesn’t seem like it should work, but that’s been the case for countless things that ended up working. Trying crazy random shit and occasionally hitting on something valuable is a perfectly acceptable complement to more conservative, slow-evolution-based approaches.
Nonsense. When you have an idea like “Youtube, but you have to pay for it”, you go straight to market.
I think the pitch to investors went something like:
1) Make expensive short videos with high profile producers2) ?????3) Profit!
But, the thing is, someone did try it and it failed almost as hard as Quibi did. Verizon launched “go90″ in 2015, complete with the “short form content targeting millennials” concept. Hell, the Wikipedia article reads like they’re talking about Quibi, it’s so simiar:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go90
Sure, there was plenty of reason to think Quibi would fail for the same reason. I’m just not fond of the “never try anything that has failed before” school of thought.
YOU’LL NEVER BE MY REAL STREAMING SERVICE PROVIDER!
It would be good that *all* the Quibi content didn’t get locked away. The Princess Bride home movie series was nicely done.
There’s some content from Quibi that I would certainly watch. What I didn’t need was to watch it on my phone in short chunks.