Quibi founder Jeffrey Katzenberg and CEO Meg Whitman are slated to hit the CES 2020 keynote stage in Las Vegas to talk up their billion-dollar bet on mobile TV streaming, three months ahead of its scheduled debut.
The duo are to deliver a keynote presentation at the annual consumer-electronics convention on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020, at 9:30 a.m. in Park Theater at the Park MGM Hotel. The talk by Quibi execs is part of CES’s C Space marketing, entertainment and media track, housed at the Aria.
Quibi (short for “quick bites”) set a April 6, 2020, launch date for its service, with shows delivered in sub-10-minute episodes, and is targeting around 7,000 episodes in the first year. The company plans to charge $5 monthly for a version with ads and $8 for an ad-free tier.
The company has raised $1 billion from investors including Disney, NBCUniversal, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Viacom, WarnerMedia, Lionsgate, MGM, ITV and Entertainment One and expects to spend a little over that amount — $1.1 billion — on content in Year One, Whitman told Variety in June. She also said the company is seeking to raise an additional $500 million to support operating capital needs through Quibi’s breakeven point.
Quibi has lined up a roster of projects for the short-form service from entertainment A-listers including Guillermo del Toro, Antoine Fuqua, Steven Spielberg, Sam Raimi, Jason Blum, Steven Soderbergh, Trevor Noah, Catherine Hardwicke, Anna Kendrick, Doug Liman and Peter Farrelly.
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Last month, CES announced its first keynote speaker for next year’s confab: Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian, who will deliver an address on Tuesday, Jan. 7, at 2 p.m. in the Venetian’s Palazzo Ballroom. CTA also announced that CES 2020 also will feature a new Travel & Tourism exhibit area.
CES 2020 will run Jan. 7-10, 2020, in Las Vegas. According to the Consumer Technology Assn., which produces CES, this past year’s show featured over 4,500 exhibiting companies across exhibit space of more than 2.9 million net square feet and drew 175,000 attendees from 160 countries.
