Roku Will Be the New Streaming Home of Quibi Shows

In the fourth quarter of 2020, the channel reached an estimated 61.8 million people, marking a doubling of its household reach year-over-year, the company said this week.

As part of the deal, Roku will also premiere more than a dozen new programs that had been produced by Quibi but never had a chance to premiere on the streaming service before the platform's quick shutdown late past year. The Roku Channel will soon be home to Emmy-nominated and popular shows, such as #FreeRayshawn, Chrissy's Court, Die Hart, Dummy, Flipped, Most Dangerous Game, Punk'd, Reno 911!, Survive, and more, featuring stars including, Idris Elba, Kevin Hart, Liam?Hemsworth, Anna Kendrick, Nicole Richie, Chrissy Teigen, Lena Waithe, and many others. On Friday, Jan. 8, 2021, Roku is buying short-lived streaming service Quibi's content library to bolster content for its free Roku Channel.

While it wasn't disclosed how much Roku paid for the rights to Quibi's content portfolio it likely won't offset the $1.75 billion that Katzenberg and Meg Whitman put into the project to get it started, nor the half a billion dollars the service reportedly lost.

Roku's shares rose 3% in early trading. You can also watch the Roku Channel via a web browser for free, but expect to encounter ads.

When will users be able to watch Quibi programming on The Roku Channel?

The Roku Channel includes more than 40,000 free movies and shows and 150 free live linear television channels. Again, we're busy getting everything prepped but stayed tuned to the Roku blog for more details once we're ready to share. It's a great value proposition for our users...

Deadline reports that Roku has finalized its acquisition of the exclusive global distribution rights to Quibi's library, one month after Jeffrey Katzenberg's mobile-only streaming venture shuttered. "And we wanted to bring it all together". Keep an eye on the Roku blog for future updates.