In the run-up to its arrival on April 6, there was a lot of speculation over whether Quibi — the new, short-form streaming service founded by former Dreamworks honcho Jeffrey Katzenberg — would succeed. Do people really want to binge short content? Do they really want to watch things on their phone? Is it perhaps terrible timing to have a quick bite service when much of America suddenly has gobs of time to kill while quarantining? Well, according to its CEO, Quibi defied the skeptics and had a great first week.

According to Deadline, Quibi head Meg Whitman claimed the service had seen 1.7 million downloads since dropping last week, which “exceeded company expectations.” She also noted 80% of viewers actually finished at least the first episode of any show they started. Earlier, preliminary data showed that 300,000 users had downloaded the app on its first day, and by day two, the total of users had grown to 530,000. (To put things in perspective, 4 million people installed Disney+ on its first day, though Disney was already, to put it lightly, an established brand.)

Right now, Quibi isn’t making money off its subscribers; rather than delay release till after the pandemic slows down, they offered a 90-day free trial. (After that, subscribers can either pay $4.99 a month with ads or $7.99 without.) It’s also worth noting that, as with Netflix, who claims huge viewership on certain titles without supplying any data, Whitman’s claim of 1.7 million downloads is just that. We also have no other figures to compare that to, especially since there’s never been a streamer whose content was as short as Quibi’s. Whatever the case, it appears that the streamer was not, as some expected, dead on arrival.

(Via Deadline)

A bunk room fit for queens.

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Deals to keep you cozy, full, and clean from Madewell, Sur La Table, Wayfair and more.

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A classic quarantine move.

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“Let’s all buy stamps and save the Post Office.”

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There have been hundreds of confirmed coronavirus cases and dozens of deaths at nursing homes in Michigan, the Detroit Free Press has found.

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Despite the philanthropic purpose and uplifting mood of his Team Love Dance-A-Thon Fundraiser Sunday, Diddy drew heat from the easily-offended denizens of social media when an excerpt of Diddy cutting off Lizzo‘s twerking session migrated from the livestream the wider social media ecosystem. At the time, Diddy said it was because the livestream was on Easter Sunday and he wanted to keep it “family-friendly.” Today, he explained exactly what he meant by that, hoping to appease the hundreds of accounts accusing him of fat-phobia.

Many on Twitter felt that Diddy exercised a double standard in requesting Lizzo put a pause on her dance session, pointing out that model Draya Michele was allowed to twerk it out to her heart’s content. However, it seems those folks overlooked some important context in projecting on Puff’s reasoning: The difference in the ladies’ respective song choices. As it turns out, Diddy objected more to the lyrics from Moneybagg Yo and Blac Youngsta’s “123,” which Lizzo used to as her own background music.

As he explained in a video at the end of the stream, “There’s one thing that I wanna make clear. My queen, my sister, Lizzo, when I stopped the music, it’s because it had a lot of curses in there. Not because she was twerking. She’s one of the best twerkers in the world, okay? So let’s keep that clear. It wasn’t about twerking. You’re allowed to twerk on Easter. There was a lot of cursing on the record and I don’t need child services knocking on my door right now, you understand?”

Specifically, the portion of the song Lizzo threw her backside to contains the lyrics: “She a bad b*tch, eat the p*ssy like a spinach / She’ll suck d*ck on the way to the dentist.” Meanwhile, Draya’s dance to Juvenile’s “Back That Azz Up” did contain the uncensored version, in which Juvenile rhymes “You a fine motherf*cker,” which has some Twitter users skeptical about Diddy’s explanation (although if you count the asterisks above, it’s pretty clear that one requires way more censorship than the other).

In any case, it’s a prime example of how things can be taken out of context on the internet — or at least, interpreted in many different ways. Fortunately, there were many other moments that seemed positive to take away from the Dance-A-Thon, such as Drake telling Diddy about the new music he’s making while on lockdown.

The two big stories that came out of WWE over the weekend don’t go together very well. One was that an on-air employee tested positive for COVID-19, and the other is that they’re resuming live broadcasts of Raw, NXT, and Smackdown. That’s three shows a week that much of their talent will have to either travel back and forth to, or isolate themselves locally, away from their families. Neither solution is great, and at a time when only essential businesses are supposed to be going to work, WWE’s justification for going live again is a bit questionable, to say the least.

Naturally, the statement they made to ESPN made it all about the fans:

We believe it is now more important than ever to provide people with a diversion from these hard times. We are producing content on a closed set with only essential personnel in attendance following appropriate guidelines while taking additional precautions to ensure the health and wellness of our performers and staff. As a brand that has been woven into the fabric of society, WWE and its Superstars bring families together and deliver a sense of hope, determination and perseverance.

But meanwhile, Dave Meltzer at WON is saying that the real issue is that WWE’s contracts with USA and Fox limit how many pre-taped shows they’re supposed to air per year, apparently to just 3, which are usually used for Christmas and the UK tour. Apparently the fear is that if they don’t go live, even during this pandemic, the networks will have justification to renegotiate other parts of the contracts.

So yes, if you were confused, it sounds like WWE’s decision to put its talent at risk by running three live weekly TV shows a week during a global pandemic is all about money. I don’t think this will surprise anyone.

WWE keeps stressing how many precautions they’re taking at these shows, but personally I can’t even bring myself to call that doing the bare minimum for their workers’ safety. In this crisis, as most of us know well, the bare minimum, unless you’re selling food or providing healthcare, should be keeping your workers home.

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