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Quibi reportedly lost 90 percent of early users after their free trials expired

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Re: Quibi reportedly lost 90 percent of early users after their free trials expired

#181

Post by Waterluvian »

ObsoleteNerd wrote: post #14

8% is not a terrible conversion rate at all, and they’ve only just started. I’m not a Quibi user and have no vested interest in them either way but this is the third different article I’ve seen in the last week or 2 talking about how terrible they’re doing and now they’re about to crash and burn, because of an 8% conversion? Comparing them to Disney is ridiculous too, it’s Disney! With multiple generations obsessed w…

I wonder what portion of that 8% are basically accidental paying customers at the moment.

Re: Quibi reportedly lost 90 percent of early users after their free trials expired

#182

Post by jrumbut »

mikeryan wrote: post #103
thiagocesar wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple, Quibi, Amazon are trying to plan the perfect breakout show. 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.

Yes but every network in existence does it and is forced into that paradigm. Every premium channel on cable (HBO/Showtime/Starz etc) have had to have a new breakout hit pretty much every year with a pretty small slate of new content - and Quibi has been able to combine this with some formats that actually should work (News, short form comedy etc).

I think the biggest issue is that there is a deluge of news and short form comedy, and it's free and good quality with a very tolerable amount of advertising on YouTube, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, television, etc, etc.

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).

Re: Quibi reportedly lost 90 percent of early users after their free trials expired

#183

Post by death_syn »

dageshi wrote: post #132
webdestroya wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Grand Tour?

I think it was pretty successful. I guarantee it got a lot of uk top gear fans subscribed to prime, it did for me.

The Grand Tour and other related shows are the only thing keeping my Prime subscription going.

Re: Quibi reportedly lost 90 percent of early users after their free trials expired

#184

Post by [deleted] »

thiagocesar wrote: post #59
mikeryan wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in this industry and generally agree with your assessment. 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 conten…

Apple, Quibi, Amazon are trying to plan the perfect breakout show. 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.

[deleted]

Re: Quibi reportedly lost 90 percent of early users after their free trials expired

#185

Post by Marsymars »

bawolff wrote: post #157
bonestamp2 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure a lot of us are looking forward to it -- it's good source material, but there's no guarantee that they will pull it off well, or that even if they do a great job, that it will be a hit.

Its pretty terrible source material if your trying to make a mainstream hit. The foundation is great, but its not your traditional laser-battle big budget mainstrean action-sf thingy.

Kinda off-topic, but I recently read The Last Astronaut[1], and got the sense that it could make a great movie adaptation, which I almost never get from sci-fi books.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40881567-the-last-astron...

Re: Quibi reportedly lost 90 percent of early users after their free trials expired

#186

Post by redisman »

schnevets wrote: post #88
thiagocesar wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple, Quibi, Amazon are trying to plan the perfect breakout show. 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.

The trailer for Apple's new Foundation show reeked of this. All of their heavily marketed content (See, Servant, Greyhound) look like they had the same person doing the trailers.

I love foundation and that looked like some generic high budget sci-fi with no indication of what actually makes the story interesting

Re: Quibi reportedly lost 90 percent of early users after their free trials expired

#187

Post by dhosek »

mkl wrote: post #160
JadoJodo wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they also have a history of original programming that dates back to the early 90s (and earlier). They've had time to perfect those ripples.

Even their first original show Oz (1997) [1] was good. It was clearly experimental and low budget (it's set almost entirely inside a prison so needs very few sets, props, costumes, etc.), but designed around that limitation to focus on the writing and characters. Netflix tried a similar strategy with one of their first original series, Orange Is The New Black. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oz_(TV_series)

More accurately, their first one-hour drama. They produced original content as early as 1976, not including sports programming or comedy showcases.

Re: Quibi reportedly lost 90 percent of early users after their free trials expired

#188

Post by dhosek »

sixothree wrote: post #116
jm4 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their mistake is they're trying to do something that all the other established players could essentially replicate overnight. Their big innovation is the shows are shorter? On top of it, their execution is poor. They put out the standard shows you would see anywhere else except edited so that a single episode turns into a half dozen shorter ones. They pretty much positioned themselves out in no man's land between Net…

I remember the early days of podcasts going commercial the group think was that they should be short. I believe companies like Discovery put out podcasts that were maybe 4 minutes tops. That thinking was just as oblivious.

I remember Merlin Mann had a blog post a decade or so ago where he considered Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac the perfect podcast in that each episode was five minutes and it came out daily.

Re: Quibi reportedly lost 90 percent of early users after their free trials expired

#189

Post by dhosek »

MBCook wrote: post #85
cgriswald wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find your statement surprising. The ease of changing or removing a subscription is the largest reason I would subscribe through iOS to anything. Is there something specific to Quibi?

No, but finding where are you unsubscribe an iOS is not the most intuitive thing. Luckily they send those emails to you that remind you that you’re about to start getting charged.

Indeed. I'd been paying for HBO through Apple since they launched HBONow. When we got AT&T fiber, they bundled in HBOMax for free. AT&T made it annoyingly difficult to sign up for the free service. And it took a while to figure out how to unsubscribe from HBO in iTunes.

Re: Quibi reportedly lost 90 percent of early users after their free trials expired

#190

Post by pfranz »

johnvanommen wrote: post #172
thiagocesar wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple, Quibi, Amazon are trying to plan the perfect breakout show. 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.

> 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. 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 budge…

This may not be relevant at all to the topic at hand, but they also made concessions for their budget (which HBO likely does, too). The pilot was written for East LA where nearby JPL was where his former founders worked. They shot the series in New Mexico because of the film subsidies. Many shows may not have been green-lit without subsidies.
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