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Former Walt Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg on COVID-19 and his latest innovation, Quibi
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Los Angeles — Jeffrey Katzenberg is very excited these days.
The former chairman of Walt Disney Studios and former co-founder and CEO of DreamWorks Animation has a new baby. And its name is Quibi.
Quibi is a new short-form mobile video platform which produces high quality Hollywood shows of 10 to 15 minutes called “quick bites” on your cell phone. It has a target audience of 25 to 35 year olds.
It’s like having your television set in your pocket.
Founded by Katzenberg, 69, Quibi will have business executive-political activist-philanthropist and former CEO of Hewlett-Packard Meg Whitman, 63, Katzenberg’s friend of more than 36 years, as the CEO.
Together they have dubbed their project as “Hollywood meets Silicon Valley.”
Quibi, which uses “Turnstyle” technology in order to dynamically switch between portrait and landscape viewing formats on your cell phone, will have movies broken into chapters of seven to 10 minutes, unscripted shows and docs of 10 minutes or less, and daily curated quick bites of news, entertainment and inspiration in the five to six minute range.
Some of the shows include Jennifer Lopez’s “Thanks a Million,” Chrissy Teigen’s “Chrissy’s Court,” Idris Elba’s “Elba vs. Block,” Reese Witherspoon’s “Fierce Queens,” among others.
We recently interviewed the dynamic and innovative Katzenberg before Quibi was launched on April 6 via video conferencing and below are excerpts of our interview:
This is an exciting project and it’s something to look forward to especially for us who are housebound. Can you talk about what changes you might have had to adapt because of the coronavirus and all the restrictions?
Oh no, it’s affected us in so many ways big and small, but let me just start with the big first. About three weeks or so ago, Meg and I sat down and really took stock of where things were at, where we were at and frankly where things seemed to be headed for our country and for all of us individually and really stepped back and made a couple of assessments and a decision out of it. So the first was, we talked about what we had set out do to with Quibi, what was Quibi’s goal, what was our ambition for Quibi.
Our goal for Quibi is to inform, to entertain and to inspire.
Every one of us in every way of our day to day life has been upended and we have uncertainty and we have fear and we have a lot of anxiety. And to actually make Quibi, which was designed to give people some laughter, to give them some entertainment, to give them a break in their days, actually seemed like a good thing that we could be doing.
And so we decided three weeks ago that we would go forward with our launch but we would make one very significant material change, which is that anybody that subscribes to Quibi, that signs for Quibi in the month of April, we will give it to them for 90 days free.
And so yes, we have been impacted here but we actually think that Quibi could be a distraction in a good way, could be a gift of laughter and a little bit of something new and different and unique that people have never seen before. And the decision to make it available to everybody and to make it free for an extended period of time is what gave us the encouragement, the goal, the ambition to move forward.
You’re a forward thinker but some of your partners at Quibi left you. So what do you do when people don’t believe in the project?
First of all, and I don’t know if you have ever been involved with or worked at startups, when you start a business from scratch, particularly when you do something as ambitious as what we are doing on Quibi. We hired 268 people in less than a year and a half, which is an extraordinary track and growth for a company. We have had three people that had left us, none by the way, in the last six months.
And I think that those things happen, they were all very, very good, very talented people. In each one of those cases I admire and appreciate them and admire and appreciate the work and contributions that they made for Quibi but the fact that it did not work out in the long term for three people out of 268 is not really something that I would indicate any concern or problem. It hasn’t been and as I said, I appreciated each and every one of them, the contributions they made.
Now that we have the pandemic, how do you think Hollywood will change after the crisis is over?
I don’t know if there’s anybody today that could actually answer your question. I don’t have a crystal ball and our world has just been changed in unimaginable ways that none of us have ever seen in our lifetimes.
We're right in the middle of the storm and to be able to see on the other side of it, to see outside the center of a tornado is something none of us have any vision or visibility to today.
I do think, only because I am an optimist that we will obviously find our way on the other side of COVID-19 and we will rebuild and we will be better and stronger for it. And so how we are going to be changed, I don’t feel like I’m equipped to be able to predict that today.
I am hopeful and right now, I’m so narrowly focused on my own little piece of business, which is the launch of Quibi. As you know, it's something that I have been working night and day now for many, many years. And we’re now literally six days away from launch and I’m optimistic, I think that Quibi is going to make people’s lives a little better, I think it’s going to give them some fun, some laughter, some distractions. And I’m excited about it.
I think that we have pioneered a new way of watching quality video experience on your phone in a way that no one’s ever done before. I think the turnout of the creative and storytelling community of Hollywood, movies, television, animation, every part of it have turned out in support of Quibi, are making amazing content for Quibi. I think they have done great work and I think people are going to be impressed, surprised and really value it.
Are you planning to expand this?
When we launch next week, we will offer to our customers 50 programs in the first week alone, over 300 episodes. There’ll be almost 250 episodes the following week. Every day after that we will publish more than 30 original pieces of content every single day.
So I think the diversity and hopefully the richness of both quality and quantity that we are giving to our prospective customers will be impressive and valued in a big way. But you are right, we set out at the outset of this to be able to offer people the widest possible selections and choices because ultimately, and I’ve talked to you all about this before, I work for the audience, right?
My job, my whole career for 45 years is the audience is my boss and on April 6th the audience starts to talk back to me and to my content partners and team and to Meg Whitman and will tell us what they like and what are the things that they are most appreciative of, what do they value the most.
Talk about your collaboration with the studios.
We have been particularly lucky if not blessed in that every one of the entertainment companies is an investor in Quibi and is a supplier of content, every single one of them are making content for Quibi today.
And to my knowledge this is the first time in the history of our industry that every single company has come together to support a new venture. I actually don’t think there’s ever been anything like that before. And I can tell you that we couldn’t be more appreciative and frankly, we wouldn’t be able to succeed without their backing and partnerships here, more because of their opening their doors for best talents and showrunners as well as some of their best IT.
Every single studio has been ambitious, if not aggressive, in being content suppliers to Quibi. So I have to feel much of our success is going to be to the credit of these companies who so generously supported us and have supported us and continue to support us.
Will there be animation in Quibi?
The answer is yes, we have a very good animation slate. We’ve announced a number of projects that Jon Favreau is producing an animated project for us called “Micro Mayhem.” Justin Roiland, who is the creator of “Rick and Morty” — I think probably the most successful animated show that’s on the air right now — [is producing] for us called “Gloop World.”
We have a diverse slate of animated projects. As you know, animation just takes a bit longer, so it’s coming. We will have animation. But remember, Quibi is an adult platform— it’s for 18 years and older — so it won’t be kid animation. It’ll be adult animation. But there is a nice diverse slate of animated projects coming.
You mentioned Quibi will also inspire people. Who is inspiring you?
Eric Garcetti is inspiring me, our mayor. Every day I watch and I listen to him and I am impressed with the job that he’s doing. I feel that we have a very good leader. I’m impressed with Gavin Newsom and the job that he’s doing as governor. And I’m impressed with a number of people, Dr. Anthony Fauci I think. I’m impressed with people who are working very hard to figure out how to get us out of the pretty dire circumstances that we’re in.
What is your business model in terms of advertising and sponsorship?
So the way Quibi works is there’s two different offerings that we have, one offering is for $4.99 a month, and on that offering there is an ad, one single ad that’s 15 seconds or less, in front of each Quibi, each episode, there’s no mid rolls, there’s no other, there’s a single 10 or 15 second commercial at the front of each of them, of each of our pieces of content.
There’s a $7.99 version of Quibi with no advertising in it. There’s no sponsorships anywhere, there’s no product integration. We wanted this to be a very, very clean platform for our subscribers, we wanted it to actually the absolute minimal about of advertising but to be able to give them a great price value and so that’s why we were able to keep the price down to $4.99 by having a small amount of advertising. Just to put in the perspective for you, so if you were to watch an hour of Quibi content you would end up having to watch two and a half minutes of commercials in the course of one hour.
How do you judge the success of a platform like this?
Well, first of all movie launching, as you know, are sprints. It all happens now in literally a day or two or three, sometimes within hours. For a subscription platform, it’s a marathon. So movies are like rocket ships, they go straight up in the air, hopefully. And if they’re great they go into orbit, they stay up there for a while.
A subscription service is quite different from that and it’s something that you build over time, measured in months and years not in days or weeks. So to give you a specific answer to your question, no, it’s what we call net paid subscribers. So what matters to us is how many people are subscribing and paying, that’s what matters.
You mentioned that the goals of Quibi is to inform, to entertain and to inspire and you added it was important to fill the gaps in between. But isn’t it important to have some quiet time as well?
Well you know, actually it’s a perfectly fair question to ask. I think we all have the ability when we want to, to turn it all off, to be in a quiet or solitary moment but those are things that are available to us. I will tell you that one of the things I urge you to try on Quibi is a show we have called “The Daily Chill.” It’s a daily essential, every day, it’s a meditation show and it’s from four to five minutes long and it’s meant to relax you. And it’s quite beautiful and quite unique. At least we’re thinking a little bit along the lines that you are. — LA, GMA News
