Comment by mchusma | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mchusma | Hacker News Reader

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I think this hits the core of the problem on the head, that Katzenberg and Whitman thought they knew what millennials wanted, but they simply did not.

They thought millennials wanted "shorter" based on the success of tiktok/instagram/etc. But their content was too long to be short. And the "golden age of TV" we are in basically proves that people don't really want shorter in scripted content. If anything, we want deeper stories. Novellas have never outsold novels. Movies were an outlier for a while, based on the fact it was so hard to produce content, but even movies are now becoming trilogy's+. Youtube is hugely successful because it satisfies niche content, the length is irrelevant.

They thought it should be "mobile", but by limiting it to mobile they meant that you could only watch part of the time. Netflix is perfectly fine on mobile.

The switching back and forth thing feels like a novelty like 1 time then you just do whatever you want and stick with that. Its also hard for creators as you don't know how people will use it, so you have to make it "worse in landscape" and "worse in portrait" so people can watch on either method.

I absolutely LOVE people taking big risks on ideas. This was just a bad idea from the start. I wish they would have blown $1.8B on some shoot the moon healthcare idea or something.

This reminds me of how business types have somehow convinced themselves that the success of franchises like Chipotle is due to "choice", that people really care about choice in fast food nowadays. As if being able to pick from different types of beans was the key differentiator, and not making a popular type of food (not otherwise available at a national chain) and doing it pretty well.

A more interesting, much smaller risk would've been something like a sketch comedy show where every clip is under a minute (Tiktok style). Yeah a ton of amateurs are already doing stuff like that, but - hire them!

Lol, Chipotle is popular with me because you get good quality food that’s healthy enough to touch most areas of the food pyramid all in one meal. Also a filling amount of food at a fair price.

> But their content was too long to be short

Totally right, imo. I might be old and out of touch, but to me 10 minutes is way too long for content on mobile, and short enough to be kind of annoying on anything else. I'd rather watch a 25 or 30 minute show if I want something short on TV.

I can't help but wonder if this actually holds up under scrutiny. I liked Quibi a lot, the problem for me was always the extreme lack of content. If anything long format media feels tedious to me these days and I lean towards TikTok and YouTube for that reason. The problem that ultimately drove me away from Quibi was the absolute shortage of content. With even a little more content it might have worked for someone with a 30 minute commute but for someone locked inside due to Coronavirus there's just no way that their tiny library was worth the price.

I don't know, seemed kind of unique. It could have taken off. I can see another startup picking up this format and doing it better. Or maybe Youtube could just do it and add it to their offerings.

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