It’s now mid-June, just over two months from the launch of the streaming service, Quibi, and all signs are pointing to a launch that was incredibly flawed, to say the least. The service has fallen well short of its modest expectations and is spending insane amounts of cash just to keep its name in the streaming conversation. But speaking in an interview at SeriesFest (via Deadline), Quibi founder Jeffrey Katzenberg seems to be turning these seemingly obvious failures into positive experiences. That is to say, he’s spinning the hell out of some bad news.
The Quibi founder explained that COVID-19 and the shutdowns that resulted from the pandemic became “a little bit of a cement wall that we ran into” during the launch of the service this past April. That being said, Katzenberg still has faith in his product.
“But I’m quite optimistic that this use case is going to work. … People are loving this,” he said.
In fact, the Quibi executive thinks there’s a “silver lining” to the terrible start for his streaming service. He says that this two-month period that has seen the service start fast but quickly fade into obscurity can be viewed almost like a beta test, in software terminology.
READ MORE: Quibi Will Reportedly Spend $1 Billion By Q3 & Is Currently Seeking More Money
Katzenberg said the benefit of the slow start “is that it’s actually given us the opportunity to have almost a beta. … In nine weeks, we have actually now seen so many aspects of the content, about what is working for them, what is most appealing to them, where our weaknesses are. All of that is being retooled as we talk here right now. We’re leaning in twice as hard on things that are working the best and leaning away from the things that are not.”
That, dear readers, is some world-class, grade-A corporate speak. In those statements, Katzenberg takes a launch of a streaming service that is failing to sign up paying subscribers and purging money at an alarming rate and turns it into a learning experience that will pay dividends in the future. Bravo, sir!
The truth has bee laid out numerous times recently, with Quibi clearly hurting both in growth and in spending, with subscribers not flocking to the mobile-first service and advertisers wanting to renegotiate terms. But even if the company does spend $1 billion by Quarter 3, there’s still plenty of money in the bank to keep Quibi around for a while, so this story is far from over.