One of the biggest problems with a new form of storytelling and state of the art techniques for anything is that as revolutionary as they might be and as interesting and appealing as it’s clear that some people think they are, the interest has to come from the consumers, who are bound to justify the money being spent on a service such as Quibi. The downside of course is that not enough people have been sticking around and have been ditching their subscriptions when they can, meaning that the millions of subscribers that the service was depending on keeping just aren’t there any longer, which in turn means a huge loss of revenue that the service was depending on to stay competitive. Another factor that hasn’t been helping Quibi at all is that the service attempted to stroll into the streaming wars with enough swagger and pomp as they tried to launch their new and innovative style among titans that barely noticed they were there. That might sound a bit cynical and dismissive, but it didn’t take long for any of the streaming giants to realize that Quibi wasn’t much of a challenge to their position since their short episodes and the fact that they were only featured on mobile devices kind of held them back in a big way. In all fairness, Quibi wasn’t nearly as prepared as they should have been, since trying to box with the big names requires a bit more punch than they’ve been able to deliver thus far. But that begs the question, who would be better off buying Quibi?
There are so many streaming sites that are doing their best to one-up each other that it’s hard to say whether any of them would benefit from buying out Quibi, or if they’d be taking on more than they really need at the moment. Right now a lot of the streaming sites are doing just fine without adding another name to their roster, but considering the talent that Quibi comes with it might be a good idea for several of them to at least consider the thought that they might be able to turn such a purchase to their advantage if they could keep the talent that Quibi has attracted. In terms of how it would affect their service and their content, it’s easy to think that any site would be able to make a win out of this and find a way that it could be accepted and/or reconditioned to turn a maximum profit since one thing is quite clear, the moment that Quibi is bought up is the moment that its platform is likely to change, and whether that’s for the better or the worse is hard to say, but it wouldn’t be staying the same as it is now. If it did, then someone has perhaps seen something in the model that Quibi has been pushing, and would want to explore it a little further. But it sounds far more likely that should Quibi be bought up by one of the major streaming services, it would change dramatically in order to better follow what any service sees as a winning formula.
It doesn’t feel likely that Disney+ would snag hold of Quibi if only because the Mouse House is already dealing with plenty of its own internal content and is still finding a stable foothold at times in the streaming wars, even though it’s been seen to be a true contender. Amazon might be a possible landing spot since it’s very likely that the site could accept buy up Quibi pretty easily and not even blink, as could Netflix and a few others. But one question that feels pertinent to ask is why Quibi should be bought out by any of those that are currently being considered as a landing spot, especially since so many of them have their own content to deal with at the moment, and because Quibi hasn’t really brought as much to the table for itself and might not do much more for anyone else if they were to buy it up. In the short-term, Quibi has been something that people thought would be another contender that might make some noise, but so far its success has been about as short as the episodes it airs of each of its programs. There might be a streaming platform that has a bit of interest in Quibi, but how much they’re going to want to purchase the streaming service for is hard to say since whether or not it’s worth that much at this point is up for debate. Some will no doubt see the inherent value in it, but one has to remember, there were plenty of game consoles that people saw value in back in the 80s and 90s as well, and look at what happened to them. Just saying is all.
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