Quibi Has Officially Shut Down After Just 8 Months | Screen Rant
Jeffrey Katzenberg and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman's Quibi has officially been shut down as of Tuesday, marking the demise of the short-lived app. Katzenberg, who ran Disney from 1984 to 1994 and also co-founded Dreamworks Pictures, and Whitman launched the app in April 2020, right at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. Featuring so-called "quick bites" of content, hence the name Quibi, the streaming service seemed to be up against it from the start, suffering launch day problems and a hefty start up fee involving the licensing and creation of over $1 billion worth of content.
Not only was it only available on a phone app, restricting viewing options, but the shows and movies made for the service suffered from a lack of quality. From Sophie Turner's strange movie Survive, which was split into 12 episodes, or chapters, no longer than 10 minutes each, to the reboot of Punk'd starring Chance the Rapper, Quibi's programming failed to connect with audiences in a meaningful way. Kaztenberg and Whitman were forced to announce the shutdown of the service in October after subscriber numbers continually failed to grow.
Now, per Variety, Quibi is officially dead, with the app no longer operable as of Tuesday, December 1. While the company's website and app are still up and running, the content itself is unavailable. The app is still downloadable via the App store on Apple devices and via the Google Play Store for Android devices, but when prompted to log in, users are given an error message, and are unable to stream any content. The streaming service, which was launched to great fanfare, is thus dead less than eight full months after launching.
While there had been no official announcement from Quibi as of Tuesday morning, the shut down date ties in with a previous release stating the service would be offline from December. It's unsure at this point if Katzenberg and Whitman have managed to sell any of the content which was available on Quibi, but there is no reason to believe that even if they do, they'll be able to recoup the massive up-front cost of the content in any case. There is also the matter of Quibi facing a lawsuit from Eko, who claim their technology was stolen by Quibi.
Quibi's spectacular failure is notable not just because of how rapidly it happened, with the app lasting far less than a full year, but also beacuse it's a warning sign for streamers. While the likes of major players Netflix, Amazon and Disney are all doing fairly well, Quibi can be a cautionary tale for other companies looking to make inroads into the streaming market. The app's demise proves not every streaming service can thrive, and new entrants into the market will have to work hard to ensure they capture audiences in an increasingly saturated content space.
Source: Variety