How Quibi's content will live on
- by Leland Aguilar
- in Entertaiment
- — Jan 10, 2021
As expected, Roku Inc. has agreed to acquire the content library of Quibi, Jeffrey Katzenberg's short-form streaming service that failed just six months after it launched previous year. It aims to compete with larger tech giants like Amazon and Apple. Both previously premiered and new Quibi titles, on which the company spent more than a billion dollars, will be exclusively available, with ads, on the Roku Channel.
It is being reported that Roku paid $100 million for the streaming rights to the Quibi content.
Roku spokesperson Dallas Lawrence said the short format will work well for the ad-supported Roku Channel because there are 'natural commercial breaks built into the programming'.
But it stepped into a market already saturated with short videos from YouTube, TikTok and other platforms, and that content is essentially generated free of cost. "And we wanted to bring it all together".
Roku said that following an internal restructuring by Quibi, Roku acquired Quibi Holdings LLC, the company that holds all of Quibi's content distribution rights. That includes the dozens of TV shows starring the likes of Idris Elba, Kevin Hart, Liam Hemsworth, and Anna Kendrick, and developed by filmmakers such as Guillermo del Toro and Steven Spielberg. You may not buy a Roku player or TV with Quibi in mind, but it'll give you a reason to check out the Roku Channel - helpful while a pandemic keeps many people at home. Since debuting The Roku Channel on its platform in 2017, the company has been steadily filling out the offering, bringing in new content through partnerships and arrangements with other media companies, but it had not pursued original programming.
Roku's deal with Quibi comes less than three months after the short-lived streaming service announced it was shutting down. The shows will be exclusive to Roku for the amount of time left on Quibi's two-year exclusivity window with their creators.
Roku has not announced when Quibi's content will become available on The Roku Channel, although it will be some time this year.
FILE - This Aug. 13, 2020 file photo shows a logo for Roku on a remote control in Portland, Ore. Some of it may be better left in the app graveyard, but there are a few Quibi series that Roku Channel subscribers will want to make sure to check out.
