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The public failure of his start-up Quibi did not prevent Jeffrey Katzenberg from doubling down on technology. A powerful Hollywood broker, he ran Disney in the ’80s and’ 90s and co-founded a rival studio, DreamWorks, before finding a conundrum he couldn’t yet solve: making people pay for short-form content. Investors gave her and former Hewlett-Packard CEO and California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman $ 1.75 billion to build a video platform, but not enough customers have opened their wallet, at $ 4.99 per month, and Quibi fell back within a year of launch. Katzenberg says the issues were suitability for the product market 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 into Quibi’s demise, the shifting power dynamics in Hollywood, and his pivot to Silicon Valley. They also discuss his influence in another sphere: politics. And the former Hollywood executive, who co-chaired a fundraiser to help fend off recent California recall efforts, offers Gov. Gavin Newsom some advice.
(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; music and sound design by Isaac Jones; mixing of Carole Sabouraud and Sonia Herrero; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Liriel Higa.
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