It doesn’t work like that. A lot of the networks’s and Netflix’s breakout shows were not planned to be great. That’s why they just greenlight a bunch of random pilots and see what sticks to the wall.
It’s extremely hard to create hits.
There's a great interview with Bryan Cranston, where he's talking about the origins of "Breaking Bad."
Basically AMC wanted to compete with HBO, but they didn't have HBO money. So they gave the creators a limited budget but a lot more creative freedom. AMC basically created an environment where creative people who had a passion project could get it off the ground if they were willing to work for less money.
In particular, Vince Gilligan had to go to the mat for Bryan Cranston, because AMC wanted Gilligan to cast someone else.
That might be true for a lot of breakout shows, but not all of them. House of Cards was arguably Netflix' first breakout show, and Netflix outbid other networks for House of Cards when they were just starting to focus on original programming. That was always painted in showbiz media as a very deliberate plan based on Netflix' data about their users' preferences.
Startup Savvy CEOs have 2, maybe 3 successful companies under their belt, so it's harder to judge how much of their success is due to repeatable factors.
“Feeling” about a show, and connections to the people running are the two major factors driving those decisions.
Data driven shows tend to be forgettable and ignored by newer generations, who are the ones holding their parents’s credit cards, and therefore, a major audience for hit shows.
Apple is making a series out of Isaac Asimov's Foundation books. [0] :-D
The foundation is great, but its not your traditional laser-battle big budget mainstrean action-sf thingy.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40881567-the-last-astron...
To succeed in short video they needed something that was beyond a bombshell, something desperately sought after but not forthcoming. Highly polished DeepFake Beatles concerts, with new music written by Paul McCartney. I don't see how you succeed charging for something that qualitatively better than YouTibe. You'd have to at least have new interactive elements (choose your own adventure? I don't know, but something cool).
We're not so different from those 1000 monkeys writing shakespeare :)
Wait till you see what Disney is offering... you are going to cancel Prime.
I’m not disputing either of your presented facts, per se, but the first of those is absolutely not implied by the second.
I've enjoyed some short-form episodic content on Amazon before, but it always left me feeling short-changed, and wishing the episodes were 30 minutes. It was too quick to go through the entire series and then it's done, I have to search for more content that is high quality, which is few and far between. Maybe it's for people with ADD who can't follow a plot longer than 10 minutes long?
Quibi is relying on a gimmick, and one that isn't even difficult to copy and has been done before. I've so far not heard of any reason that would compel me to spend my time on their site when there's so much other content out there.
I'm also not sure why anyone would want Meg Whitman on board at a company like this, unless she's somehow responsible for bringing some of that 1.8 Billion in funding, and even then she should only be on the board, not in the C suite.
I worked at HPE, when Whitman was CEO.
The impression I got, was that she's a bit of a wizard when it comes to finance.
For instance, the organization that I was a part of, we lost a pile of money. But despite that, HPE was able to sell the org off to SuSE.
IE, if Whitman wasn't a wizard, the entire venture may have been a 100% loss. But she was able to flip that organization to another buyer.
It very well could be that their shortage of content wouldn't have been as big of a deal because their ideal users weren't binging on their stuff, just watching while on a train or lunch break.
I'm not saying they haven't made mistakes, but it does feel like this aspect is missing in a lot of the bandwagon criticisms of the service.
You are really telling me that people are too busy watching 2 hour documentaries or reading books to load up Quibi for a quick hit? I don't buy this at all. We don't still have lunch breaks?
I know this is kind of the "insider narrative" on this (I actually bought my house from someone fairly high up that relocated to the west coast to work there) but this really rings hollow. After reading some of Katzenburg's comments in an article a few months ago where he said "I blame everything that has gone wrong on Coronavirus. Everything." This is not a successful approach to thinking about why your product isn't getting the market fit you thought it would. Then throw in some highly annoyed comments when it was retorted that Tik Tok is thriving with "its comparing apples to submarines." With thinking like that I don't think they stand a chance really.
Personally I can not imagine a better time to launch a video platform than the onset of a pandemic where people are stuck inside with little else to do aside from consume content.
Even then, adjusting to the new reality and repackaging 10 minute episodes of a show into 30-60 minute episodes could likely be done in an editors suite in a few weeks.
Agreed. "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" anyone?
The problem is that the short time bursts are highly variable, but they specifically target 10 minutes. That's why people scroll through twitter or instagram, it fills the void, no matter how long it is.
And, yes, I know it sounds kind of bizarre to ridicule a ten-minute short as “too long”. Fortunately, the public is (still, for now) absolutely willing to watch productions that take a bigger time and attention investment. It’s just, they want to watch it at home, possibly with others, on a bigscreen. Quibi deliberately avoided that with the “mobile only” constraint that they’re now reversing.
Edit: sorry for overusing “still”.
Who else has: * 10 minute+ but less than 22-30 minute "full TV show" long uninterrupted breaks * Where their phone is the primary connectivity device * Predictably available?
If I'm at home, I have the PC, the TV, any number of better ways to enjoy content. If I'm in a car I'm driving, I can't watch video. If I'm on the toilet or a lunch break, I may not have 10 uninterrupted minutes.
I wonder if in 20 years, we'll see it on self-driving cars as a similar fit. "Your estimated trip time is 17 minutes, here are some recommendations of programming for the dashboard screen."
For 3, what would you envision for this test, other than normal market research / focus groups that they likely conducted? Surely you shouldn't launch the Quibi brand with just one show if the goal is a full-fledged streaming platform.
However a few things, the general industry perspective went like this:
1. David Katzenberg and Meg Whitman were creating a consumer service targeting a demographic they don't fit in a field they've not worked in. (Consumer apps for a younger demographic)
2. They got 1.8 Billion in funding. For fuck's sake you should get one breakout hit piece of content from that. (Note Apple is struggling a bit with this one too). With the funding, hype and content they've spent on the expectations are going to be pretty damn astronomical, they brought high expectations on themselves.
3. Their entire premise was based on this concept of quick bites of content. With an almost 2 billion dollar war chest the right thing to do would have been to test this theory maybe? Roll out a single show first, backfilled with some news? Get some feedback maybe?
Quibi is led by some serious heavy hitters, so its not spoken much out loud but I think a lot of folks in the industry felt this play was based mostly on hubris and now there's a certain sense of schadenfreude as they start to flail.