The public failure of its start-up Quibi has not stopped Jeffrey Katzenberg from doubling the technology. A Hollywood power runner, he directed Disney in the 1980s and 1990s and co-founded a rival studio, DreamWorks, before finding a puzzle he still couldn’t solve: getting people to pay for short-format content. Investors gave him and former Hewlett-Packard CEO and California Gov. candidate Meg Whitman $ 1.75 million to build a video platform, but there were not enough customers to open his wallets, at $ 4.99 a month, and Quibi folded a year after its release. Katzenberg says the problems were product market adequacy and the Covid pandemic, not competition from TikTok or YouTube.
[You can listen to this episode of “Sway” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]
In this conversation, Kara Swisher and Katzenberg delve deeper into Quibi’s demise, the changing power dynamic in Hollywood, and her pivot in Silicon Valley. They also discuss its influence in another area: politics. And the former Hollywood executive, who co-chaired a fundraiser to help defend California’s recent recovery effort, offers some advice to Governor Gavin Newsom.
(A full transcript of the episode will be available at noon on the Times website.)
Thoughts? Email us at [email protected].
“Sway” is produced by Nayeema Raza, Blakeney Schick, Matt Kwong, Daphne Chen and Caitlin O’Keefe and edited by Nayeema Raza; fact-checking by Kate Sinclair; Isaac Jones music and sound design; mix of Carole Sabouraud and Sonia Herrero; Shannon Busta’s audience strategy. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Liriel Higa.