The Fight to Fill Your Downtime

This morning, the countdown clock on my subway platform announced the next G train wouldn’t arrive for 13-minutes. It was annoying but I had options - all of which were a swipe away:

• Answer work emails on Outlook

• Listen to The Daily on Podcasts

• Listen to a playlist on Spotify

• Scroll through Twitter or Instagram

• Read an article on the NYT or WSJ app

Quibi wants to dive into that red ocean to compete for bursts of attention. To date, the nascent short-form video streamer has raised $1B in funding and announced it seeks another $1B as it prepares for launch. According to a recent article in The Information, “Quibi executives including [Jeffrey] Katzenberg and [Meg] Whitman have argued their aim with bite-sized content is to offer entertainment for people during brief periods of downtime - for example, while they’re waiting for the bus.”

The strategy to compete in short-form is motivated by Quibi’s desire to put distance between themselves and “the fray of major media companies [Disney, WarnerMedia, NBCUniversal]”, as well as new and entrenched streamers like Apple TV+, Hulu and Netflix, “jostling for position in the in-home entertainment business.”

I think the immediate winners will be short-form content suppliers.

As for my wait...I used the downtime to write this post.