Quibi comes to the Roku Channel with acquisition
- The shows previously streamed on the Quibi service will be shown on the Roku Channel.
- Over 75 titles can be viewed on Roku’s free content service.
- The Quibi content will be added sometime later in 2021.
Quibi was perhaps the biggest mistake in the short-lived streaming media business model. It launched in mid-April 2020 after receiving over $ 1 billion in investment funds. However, nobody wanted to pay to see their “quick bites” of scripted and unscripted shows (10 minutes or less per episode). It was closed in December 2020.
Today Roku announced that all of this content on Quibi will soon be getting a second life on its Roku channel.
Quibi on the Roku Channel platform
The Roku press release did not specify how much money the streaming OS company paid to acquire Quibi’s content. However, The Wall Street Journal reports that the company spent less than $ 100 million on the rights.
The shows can be viewed for free on the company’s Roku channel, which is available for phones on iOS and Android, on the web, and as an app on Roku’s streaming devices and smart TVs. There’s no word on when the shows will appear on the Roku Channel, except sometime in 2021. There’s also no word on whether the mobile apps support Quibi’s ability to display slightly different content in landscape and portrait mode.
Continue reading: Roku buying guide
Quibi’s content library contained several Emmy award-winning shows in the short form categories. These included shows like Most Dangerous Game, #Freerayshawn, a Reno 911 revival, and more. diversity reports that over a dozen shows that were ready to be shown on Quibi but failed to make it before shutting down will now debut on the Roku Channel.
Roku also announced today that its operating system is the best-selling smart TV operating system in North America for 2020. As of Dec. 26, it had 38% of the smart TV market share in the US and 31% in Canada, according to the NPD. It also announced earlier this week that it had 51.2 million active accounts by the end of 2020, up from 36.9 million accounts in 2019.
