Portal A has spent $1 million trying to make premium short-form work. Is it?

Quibi was perhaps the biggest streaming service failure of all time. Founded by former Walt Disney exec and DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg, it raised nearly $2 billion from most of the major studios in Hollywood, and planned to use that money to produce big screen-quality movies and TV shows. The catch? It would only let viewers watch those movies and TV shows in 10-minute chunks.

At the time, lo-fi short-form content had been out of trend post-Vine, and was just starting to take off again with the rise of musical.ly and TikTok. Quibi wanted to capitalize on that rise by giving people premium content they could watch during their commutes, or in line at the grocery store.

But people didn’t want it. Quibi tanked on takeoff, and announced plans to cease operations only six months after debut. Since then, creator-made short-form content has skyrocketed in popularity, becoming a main component of platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and even X.

Does that mean now, four years after Quibi’s death, people are ready for premium short-form?

We’re not sure, but Portal A thinks so: The digital media studio has spent $1 million in production resources and staff costs over the past two years with its program Moonshots, which enlists established content creators, filmmakers, and celebrities, and pays for them to make premium short-form shows. Moonshots focuses on getting creators to extrapolate their current content into “fresh IP and unique formats,” Portal A co-founder and President Zach Blume tells Tubefilter.

Moonshots has been around since 2018, with creator Alexis G. Zall‘s comedy/horror YouTube series Maybe Today, Satan “opening doors” for Portal A to seal a partnership with Snapchat. That partnership ended up bringing in “north of $5 million dollars in revenue,” Blume says, and led to brand deals with companies like Lyft and Ketel One. In 2023, Portal A (which is backed by Wheelhouse) revamped the Moonshots program to be more short-form-focused, and launched a nine-show slate fronted by celebrities and creators including Olympic swimmer Bella Sims and Gen Z venture capitalist Marshall Sandman.

Its latest premium short-form projects are fronted by a similar mix of people: established creator and mixologist Wootak Kim is hosting Signature Drink; basketball player and YouTuber Drew Joiner is behind Fit Check; and film producer Jaeki Cho is the creator of Third Cultures. All three creators are posting their shows to their TikTok and/or Instagram accounts.

Blume says talent selection is one of the main reasons it can succeed where Quibi failed.

“Quibi tapped old, traditional Hollywood talent to bring them into digital/social without an understanding the type of talent that would actually move audiences online,” he explains. “We’re focusing exclusively on social-native talent with built-in audiences and credibility in the spaces they’re creating content for.”

Portal A also isn’t spending $100,000 per minute on content. Blume says most shows get budgets between $25,000 and $50,000. That underwrites all production costs for the creator–and in exchange, Portal A gets to co-develop the creative direction, be the show’s producer, and has first right of refusal as both executive producer and production company of record if the project gets sold to a streaming service or network.

As we mentioned above, creators post Moonshots series on their own personal channels. That’s another differentiator: “Quibi created a sealed universe on its platform whereas we know that audiences want to consume content where they already spend their time. We’re distributing on social with built-in audiences,” Blume says.

Portal A doesn’t take a cut of creators’ social media ad revenue, but does share ownership of Moonshots series IPs with the creators, and will get between 50% and 80% of a show’s sale price if it’s picked up by a streamer/network.

Right now, Portal A isn’t looking at Moonshots as a quick-cash moneymaker (although, as Blume pointed out, it did earn a chunk of change from Snapchat before the platform moved away from buying short-form shows). Instead, it’s a long-term strategy that heads where the studio thinks the creator industry will go in the coming years: toward higher-production-value short-form.

“Moonshots is an investment in ourselves and in this ecosystem, an attempt to explore what’s next and see if we can help shape it,” Blume says. “And if there is financial upside–fantastic, that validates it even further (and makes it more defensible from a business POV).”

He adds, “With social platforms like YouTube, Snapchat, and Instagram no longer buying original series, creators have less options and outlets to develop and incubate creative IP. For the right Creator, Moonshots is a perfect outlet for this type of exploration.”

Portal A isn’t alone in thinking premium short-form can still make it: TikTok reportedly wants to produce original, in-house minidramas, and is considering asking Hollywood studios to make them. Blume points to shows like Keep the Meter Running, Subway Takes, Bite Me, Thrift Wars, What’s Poppin, and Deep Cut as examples of premium short-form shows that are working, and gives nods to Fallen Media and Gymnasium, two other studios focused on releasing premium short-form on social platforms.

When we ask for data on how Moonshots has performed so far for Portal A, Blume says it’s “an incomplete picture since all the shows are in progress,” but says that overall, “we’re seeing that many/most of the episodes are outperforming their typical work on Instagram.”

Kim’s Signature Drink, for example, has in general performed better than other uploads on his Instagram account @barchemistry, with one upload getting 124K views compared to 76K and 69K for the two Reels he posted before and after it. Other episodes haven’t fared quite as well; the most recent installment, posted Nov. 13, has 30.5K views, compared to 166K and 68K for the uploads around it (neither of which were produced through Moonshots).

It’s clear that there is an audience out there for premium short-form, but we’re not sure if that audience will translate off free-to-watch social media platforms. Portal A, though, is fully committed, and doubling down. Blume says his company “will be focusing our investment looking ahead” on creator-led, short-form Moonshots.

“It will be our exclusive focus heading into 2025–we’re lining up another wave of these types of projects for Q1 and will package up and take them out to marketers and networks as a slate in the new year,” he says.