• General
  • June 4, 2020
  • 4 minutes read

Quibi Cuts Jobs

Quibi founder Jeffrey Katzenberg. Photograph by Stuart Isett for Fortune Magazine, under Creative Commons license As first reported by Page Six, Quibi,…

Quibi founder Jeffrey Katzenberg.

Photograph by Stuart Isett for Fortune Magazine, under Creative Commons license

As first reported by Page Six, Quibi, the recently-debuted video streaming service from entertainment veteran Jeffrey Katzenberg, has cut some jobs and also pay for some of its lower-level staffers, after a relatively unsatisfactory launch. Despite raising about $1.8 billion in pre-launch funding and with a roster of big movie stars who produced exclusive content for Quibi, the company has not lived up to expectations since the launch of its streaming service in early April. A month after its launch, Quibi is said to have courted 1.3 million monthly active users and 3.5 million users in total. That number seems small for a service like Quibi, which spent big on marketing and exclusive content. More so, most of Quibi’s users are currently on a free trial, with no certainty they’ll begin paying for the service once the trial period is over.

Not long after Page Six‘s report was published, an ensuing report from the Wall Street Journal said Quibi is considering even more job cuts that could affect 10% of its workforce. Also, some of Quibi’s executives have taken pay cuts, according to the Journal.

Quibi was founded in 2018 by Jeffrey Katzenberg, a co-founder of famed Hollywood studio DreamWorks and a former studio chairman of Disney. After founding Quibi, Katzenberg recruited former HP and eBay CEO Meg Whitman to serve as the company’s chief executive. Quibi, whose video streaming service is differentiated by exclusive content in a world of many streaming services, has spent big for such content from entertainment bigwigs including the likes of Steven Spielberg, Reese Witherspoon, Chrissy Teigen, Idris Elba, Jennifer Lopez, Ayo & Teo, Chancelor “Chance the Rapper” Bennett, Scooter Braun, James Patterson, and Trevor Noah.




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