wither today, i sat down meg whitman, the ceo of max thehin -- the ceo of quibi, short-term mobile content app. they did not expect to launch in the middle of a pandemic but the numbers are beating their expectations. meg: that is roughly in the ballpark over time of breakeven. it depends on the amount of watching, the advertising revenue, the split between advertising supported subscribers. we are very focused on profitability. revenues need to be greater than costs. clear businessry plan. we have got a long ways to go. emily: let's talk about the money. it is free for the first 90 days. how many do you expect will start paying for that? meg: we don't know because this is such an unusual time. of covid, we wanted to give people a 90 day free trial if you sign up by the end of april. those folks will not have to pay until july. but if you signed up may 1, you will have a two week free trial. it is hard to know. you just do not quite now. there are industry benchmarks, but who knows? emily: 1.7 million downloads so far. you will get a lot of data on people watching. how do you plan to use t

meg whitman, ceo of quibi, thanks for joining us. we will be back after this quick break. bloomberg. ♪ have some breaking news from delta airlines. expectsying it second-quarter revenue to be down about 90%. it says its april flight schedule will be below original plans by about 80% and that 30,000 workers have applied for leave, but it needs more than that. it is cutting merit and hourly based ground worker hours. we are starting to get some pre-announcements. with the embattled airline industry coming out and saying that second-quarter revenue will be down, burning more than $60 million cash per day. and this is really going to be the issue going forward. when can these airlines actually bounceback in terms of getting people flying again and how long that takes is going to determine how much cash these companies have. right now these types of numbers are probably going to get the same types of numbers out of most of their competitors. scarlet: and a reminder that you will want to subscribe to our weekly broadcasting on itunes. and it is our 100th episode. producer forto

let's bring in ceo meg whitman, who joins us for more. at i understand, jennifer lopez is the most popular on the platform in the first week but you are giving it away for free for 90 days. i'm wondering how many customers will stick with you when they have to start paying. >> well, first of all, thanks for having me. delighted to be here. we are really pleased by our launch. you're right, jennifer lopez is in one of the most popular shows, although we have others, liam hemsworth in the most dangerous games and lebron james but when covid hit, we originally thought we would have a two-week free trial. then we said given the economic circumstances, let's do 90 days for people. it will give them a long time to not have to pay for the service, then in three months, we will know about, in the industry they call it roll to pay, how many people decide to stay with us. it's impossible to know at this point. what we also know is if you sign up by the end of april, that's when you get your 90-day free trial. if you sign up in may, you will obviousl

we talked to meg whitman about it she joins us to fill in on how the week went.d to see you under these unusual circumstances. i thought of your company, of course, given it would have seemed that it was well-positioned to capture people who were on the move. and we are in an economy right now in which people are not on the move they're home did that hurt the launch at all or were you still pleasantly surprised? >> well, first, great to see you again. as you said, under these unusual circumstances. but it didn't hurt us at all we had 1.7 million down loads in the first week it exceeded our plans and expectations and the app is very popular. i have have a to the say it's one of the most successful launches of a completely new brand and app. and interestingly, we did see that people are watching quibi 7:00 in the morning until 7:00 at night in the inbetween moments. we thought it would be out and about commuting, well it turns out people have inbetween moments at home. between zoom calls and taking care of the house. we don't think it hurt us. we're delighted by th

andalked to meg whitman jeffrey katzenberg a few times. $1.7 million the first week, really good numbers, then it seems that these numbers are falling off. outlook even that thatare -- outlook given they are spending $125 a minute on this content? john: if they have not already blown their entire stockpile of originals, then they might find their it at any point. with originals, it is all about hit driven they may pull a tiger king out of their pocket. they also have to learn a lot about audience habits. they are really starting from scratch. they do have deep pockets. they are spending a lot of money, so they have the wherewithal to ride this out for a little bit. the more data they can usinglate about who is what part of their content and in what ways -- their original premise that gen z'ers on the move will be watching this, they have had to recalibrate that. s have noticed my gen z'er happy to watch on their phone just sitting stationary. emily: what about apple tv plus? some are saying this could be apple's moment because they have millions of dollars in cash they can spend on progr

so i went back to meg whitman, my partner, and she went to the engineers, and they went, okay, listen, this thing knows where we are, it knows what time zone we're in, and to the second, it knows when sun will set tonight and when it's going to come up tomorrow morning. and they came up with this idea that it's called "spielberg's after dark" and it will have a clock in the bottom right hand corner and it's ticking down to when sun sets, and you can watch it, and then when the sun comes up the next morning, it disappears. >> one of the things my colleagues were talking about is the special slip feature on re watch it any way you can move your phone. >> the beauty of this is that -- my sound is off, but if i turn my phone this way, it's beautiful in landscape, right? and if i turn it this way, it's beautiful, it's full screen no matter how you're watching it. and this is a brand-new technology, patented, that our engineers created and designed specifically for quibi. when we put this in the hands of filmmakers, they went, wow, you can actually make stuff look beautiful on the phone. >>

created, designed for the 18 to 44-year-old, ma lillennial audie and there's no question i think meg whitman and myself and the three, four weeks ago look add at what was ahead of us. to continue on with the launch of it. people as you say right now today, i don't think we've ever as a country ever faced anything as dire and is impacting our day-to-day life. in such a really, really difficult time >> from day one, we've talked about it over the last year, year and a half, has been designed to inform and entertain and inspire people and we have been a able to gather together the absolute top, top best talent show and story tellers in hollywood to create a premium content unlike anything anyone has ever seen before all u designed to be beautiful on this phone. and our decision was that this is a moment in time they really need a distraction to have these places in the course of our days right now, where you know we're not hunkerhunker hunkered down home schooling our kids not answering e-mails, on video calls. that giving people these breaks in the course of their day as we all shelter in and

meg whitman came up with this new thing on the app that on spielberg's show, there's a clock ticking it's clicking down when the sun sets, you can watch the show when the sun comes up, it disappears to the next night a lot of innovative fun things we're doing. amazing content. fifty original shows, 500 pieces of original content in our first two weeks. >> jeffrey katzenberg. jeffrey, thank you, again. quibi, it drops today. you can find it wherever you get your apps. by the way, be sure to look for "the report" nbc news daily on the streaming service. hoda kotb. >> all right, craig. thank you. just ahead, olympic legend michael phelps on the impact of a delayed olympics and how the battle of the coronavirus, how it strains your mental health. but first this is "today" on step by step, we're going to figure this out. we're gonna find a way through this. we're working really, really hard in hospitals, our nurses are techs, all the docs. it's about staggering when people get sick so that the hospitals can cope. we're gonna go through an awful lot of these all across puget sound. people

ashley: very quickly, i know you have been working with meg whitman. she's a titan of industry. that partnership worked? >> she's amazing. she's the ceo of a company. we have known each other for 30 years. i know what i know on the content side. on the technology side, i needed somebody who was frankly, you know, as much a go-getter as me and i found someone that's even more so in meg. she's just an incredible, incredible executive and leader. she has created this technology and i can just show you a little if you want here. it is game-changing and makes watching on this phone something like you have never seen before. that's really what meg has brought to the partnership, and much more, but at minimum, that. ashley: we wish you and meg and the rest of the team best of luck. quibi. i will be sure to check it out along with "tiger king." thank you so much, jeff katzenbe katzenberg, for joining us. be shower ure to tune in thursd our virtual town hall, america works together with charles payne. he will have great stories to share, thursday, april 9th, 2:00 p.m. eastern. tune in. a

meg whitman, my partner and i, felt quibi was designed from the beginning to inform and to entertainthink when people get to see this amazing content made by the best storytellers in hollywood, that's what will happen. so in a way we're maybe an escape. maybe we can bring some laughter and cheer and we decided to give it away free for three months, which was not our original plan here. so we've had to make adjustments. we've had to change some of our planning but we think in the end, this is a treat for people at a moment in time in which any little break, i think, will be appreciated. at least that's our hope. >> and the concept, you hear about short films and you think, okay, this is something that people may go out and do on the cheap. actually, you have got spielberg, a lot of other stars participating in this. and the production costs for a lot of those movies that come in under ten minutes, extremely high. the quality is really top notch. so people that want to escape if like you said, ten minutes in between certain things can just go on quibty and see a ten-minute installation