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Quibi Picked the Worst Time to Launch a Streaming Service for Short Attention Spans - Or maybe the best? (archive)

For months, Quibi, the phone-based streaming service that launched Monday, has been getting roasted by the small group of people whose professions require them to know about the existence of Quibi. The gist of the jokes has been that Quibi sounds like a 30 Rock fiction come to life. The brainchild of billionaire boomers Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman, it's predicated on the idea that no one can pay attention any more, so if anything is going to lure the scattered, cellphone-obsessed youth away from the free and varied YouTube content with which they seem generally satisfied, it's high production values that you can't really see on a cellphone and the imprimatur of celebrities grandparents have heard of. Quibi has gone on a buying spree for every famous person in Hollywood's leftover ideas, which have been turned into "quick bites" of six to 10 minutes apiece. The company has already raised $1.75 billion dollars, on the strength of that idea and a slate that includes a reality show called Murder House Flip.

As someone who has not been above a Quibi joke herself, I am disappointed to report that Quibi is neither a glorious embarrassment nor a surprising triumph. It is, instead, expensively competent. The dozens of star-studded series it debuts with are, in general, solid and professional, and tend toward uplifting but brief documentaries I could totally imagine spacing out to in a waiting room. (The fact that almost no one on the planet Earth is spacing out in a waiting room right now is another Quibi punchline.) The implicit assumption of Quibi is that no one has any time anymore, even, say, for a 22-minute sitcom. And yet it is arriving at a moment when a majority of Americans have more time than they had weeks ago—if also, perhaps, even more shredded attention spans.

Quibi review – shortform sub-Netflix shows aren't long for this world

The problem is that for an initial line-up, there's nothing particularly buzzworthy. The ones that almost work (Funny or Die's Flipped coasts on the comic appeal of the stars Kaitlin Olson and Will Forte while Murder House Flip stands out because of its barmy premise: a home makeover show for a house where a spate of killings took place) don't work enough to demand a subscription. The 90-day free trial will surely attract some curiosity but unless there's a steep uptick in quality, most will probably drop out before paying.

In short, as Quibi seems to prefer it, the majority of its initial lineup consists of shows we don't need right now on a platform we don't really want. It's an idea born in an LA conference room that will probably die in the real world, content for content's sake, teasing something bigger and better that doesn't seem to come. We might all have more time than ever right now but there still isn't enough time for Quibi.

Quibi's Mobile-Only Viewing Is Already Frustrating Some People (archive)

A few hours into Quibi's much-hyped debut, people have expressed irritation over something that's supposed to be one of the streamer's key differentiating features: You can only watch its lineup of original movies and shows on a mobile device.

Can't you just screencast (or screen mirror) a smartphone to a TV?

Also at AndroidPolice.

Related: Fox Could Buy Tubi While NBCUniversal Eyes Vudu

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