Goodbye, Quibi: Short-form Streamer Officially Shuts Down Today

Farewell, Quibi, we hardly knew ye. After less than eight months, the streaming service from Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman, which featured short-form videos designed for mobile viewing, is officially no more. The company announced in October that it would be shutting down, but at the time did not specify an end date. Opening the app today renders an error message that informs users “something went wrong,” marking the end of the short-lived streamer, one of the highest-profile casualties of the streaming wars. It’s an underwhelming conclusion for a startup that generated an eye-popping $1.75 billion in venture funding. Ahead of its April 6 launch, it promised to upend the entertainment industry with high production value programming that viewers could watch during their “in-between moments” throughout the day. Those in-between moments failed to materialize, partially because Americans were relegated to their homes and partly because the service never landed standout hits. Combined with a backward marketing strategy focused on brand-building over program marketing and an app that limited social sharing and the ability to cast to bigger screens, the service struggled to find an audience. That, in turn, negatively affected Quibi's video advertising business. Underwhelming viewership disappointed the inaugural class of Quibi's advertisers with significant under-deliveries, which put a damper on Year 2 advertising talks. Why Quibi Failed: 5 Reasons the Short-Form Streamer Sank So Fast “[Quibi has] to overcome that perception of being a failing platform—which is maybe premature, but that is certainly the perception among some—and that becomes a hill to climb when it comes to locking in ad dollars that become high-value long-term,” one media buyer previously told Adweek. The service never did seem to overcome that perception and was also locked in a bitter legal fight over its Turnstyle technology, which let viewers watch programming full screen in either landscape or portrait mode on the phones. In late October, Katzenberg and Whitman informed investors they were pulling the plug because the venture failed to find an audience big enough to justify the continued costs. “Quibi was a big idea and there was no one who wanted to make a success of it more than we did,” the co-founders wrote at the time in an open letter. “Our failure was not for lack of trying; we’ve considered and exhausted every option available to us.” Quibi Is Shutting Down After Just 6 Months: ‘Our Failure Was Not for Lack of Trying’ A few questions remain unanswered, including the status of some Quibi series like CBS News' 60 in 6 that are looking for new homes, and whether advertisers will be able to finalize terms around any outstanding make-goods. In an end of service announcement published in late October, Quibi informed users: "At this time we do not know if the Quibi content will be available anywhere after our last day of service." After the shutdown announcement, other news about the streamer had been largely quiet—except for when Quibi somewhat inexplicably trended on Twitter on Monday. Unfortunately, it's probably not for reasons the doomed service would have liked. Comedian Rory Strahan-Mauk posted a fake Wikipedia entry for a made up Quibi show (Jack Sparrow House, a reality show featuring a cast of Jack Sparrow impersonators required to stay in character) that went viral. While Jack Sparrow House was a punchline, some of the responses said it all, with several users saying they thought the synopsis sounded so real for Quibi, they had to double-check to be sure.