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Quibi enters final days, expected to stop streaming in December

The logo of streaming service Quibi. (Logo: Quibi/Graphic: The Desk)

Less than a year after it launched to much fanfare (and disappointment), short-form streaming service Quibi is expected to finally come to an end in early December.

No hard date has been announced for Quibi’s eventual end, but a customer support message posted on Quibi’s website said the service expected to cease operations “on or about December 1, 2020.”

Executives at Quibi announced the service’s demise in late October after the company quickly blew through investor cash and failed to reach preliminary subscriber goals.

“Quibi was a big idea and there was no one who wanted to make a success of it more than we did,” founder Jeffrey Katzenberg and chief executive Meg Whitman wrote in an open letter. “Our failure was not for lack of trying; we’ve considered and exhausted every option available to us.”

Those options included selling the company’s content to third parties, including Comcast’s NBC Universal and Facebook. When that didn’t work, Quibi explored the possibility of putting itself up for sale. That didn’t work, either.

As of Monday, it wasn’t clear whether Quibi’s content would live on at another streaming service. Company executives have been relatively quiet about the service since the closure announcement.

 

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About the Author:

Matthew Keys

Matthew Keys is an award-winning journalist with more than 10 years of experience covering the business of television and radio broadcasting, streaming services and the overall media industry. In addition to his work as publisher of The Desk, Matthew contributes regularly to StreamTV Insider and KnowTechie, and has worked for several well-known news organizations, including Thomson Reuters, McNaughton Newspapers, Grasswire, Comstock's magazine, KTXL-TV and KGO-TV. Matthew is a member of IRE, a trade organization for investigative reporters and editors, and is based in Northern California.

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