Quibi CEO Meg Whitman will be speaking at the Democratic National Convention on Monday night — but the DNC Committee isn’t showing much love to the new short-form streaming service.
Whitman’s inclusion, announced Monday, stood out for two reasons. First off, she’s one of four current or former Republicans who will be speaking at the convention this week, joining Former Ohio Governor John Kasich, former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, and former New York Rep. Susan Molinari. It also stood out because Quibi was conspicuously missing from the DNC Committee’s announcement; instead, as New York Magazine’s Josh Barro pointed out on Twitter, the announcement lists Whitman as the “former CEO of Hewlett Packard” — rather than giving a shoutout to her current employer.
Why is Meg Whitman identified as former CEO of Hewlett-Packard rather than as current CEO of Quibi? https://t.co/pMdm9tw3WU
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) August 17, 2020
The non-shoutout for Quibi comes as the streaming service, spearheaded by Whitman and Jeffrey Katzenberg, has struggled to win over subscribers since launching in April. Last month, TheWrap reported that out of 910,000 people who downloaded Quibi in the three days following its April 6 launch, only 72,000 people converted to paying subscribers. Quibi pushed back on the data, which was provided by Sensor Tower, saying it was wrong by an “order of magnitude.”
Whitman ran for governor of California as a Republican in 2010, but her inclusion at the DNC shouldn’t be a complete shock, considering she supported Hillary Clinton in 2016.
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