Quibi teams up with NBC News

Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman’s shortform video venture Quibi has signed a deal with NBC News to produce daily bulletins targeting the millennial audience.

Jeffrey Katzenberg

NBC News will produce morning and evening shows for the service, each under six minutes long and created specifically for viewing on mobile.

The bulletins will be available on the service from its launch in April next year and will form part of its curated daily news and information programming, dubbed Daily Essentials.

Hosts for the daily morning and evening programmes, along with dedicated correspondents, will create original news content for Quibi in a custom-built studio at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York.

Breaking news coverage will be powered by NBC News Now, the network’s digital streaming service, and the partnership will provide Quibi with access to NBC News’ worldwide newsgathering teams, as well as more than 70 years of NBC News archival footage.

It is the latest content deal signed by Quibi, which has been the talk of the industry since former Disney chairman Katzenberg unveiled his plans for a dedicated shortform platform.

LA-based Quibi, led by former eBay and Hewlett Packard exec Whitman as CEO, has been staffing up and commissioning content ready for launch, with a content budget for its first year reportedly in the region of US$1bn.

This will also include a psychological thriller from UK-based World Productions, producer of Bodyguard, based on Harriet Tyce’s novel Blood Orange.

The novel follows a criminal barrister taking on her first murder case and the project marks the first UK-originated scripted development for Quibi.

Earlier this month, BBC Studios (BBCS) in the UK received its first order from the start-up service. Its BBC Natural History Unit is working on Fierce Queens (working title), a blue-chip series exploring nature’s phenomenal females.

BBCS is also one of the latest TV companies to invest in Quibi, which also counts ITV, Disney, Entertainment One, Fox, Lionsgate, MGM, NBCUniversal, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Viacom and WarnerMedia among its investors.