Majority of gen Z / millennial folks that I know, don't care about Trevor Noah or any of the late night comedians. They care more about famous YouTubers and TikTok stars.
It sounds like they’re still interested in celebrities, it’s just a different set of people than older generations expect.
I wonder, is that gap new or just part of the cycles of life?
Given that this is where there is just a separate group of people that understands or learns the selection criteria for YouTube/Twitter/TikTok/Twitch whatever and can have more synergy transferring between these outlets. It makes sense that someone who in another setting is popular just seems to land flat when they are having to relearn a new way of presenting themselves and the old tools don't work. Even celebrities that start a YouTube channel that I at least followed in passing end up feeling terrible, and I don't think I've seen a hollywood grade external star stick with their YouTube content long enough to actually start learning what needs to change.
This doesn't suggest that no youtubers have staying power: Pewdiepie has been around for a while and has a massive subscriber count. But he is literally the best of the best, and my point is just that the staying power of a celeb is now more fluid all up and down the distribution of popularity.
People can’t keep up with everything as it is. There is a massive content bubble. I don't think Quibi or even most of Hollywood will survive.
If quibi was actually interested in making stuff to suit millennial taste, they should have focused on absurdist comedy, which is usually short-form anyhow. Stuff like Eric Andre or Adult Swim's "Infomercials" series ("Too Many Cooks", "Unedited Footage of a Bear" + many others that vary from amazingly memorable and funny to unwatchably awful) is exactly the kinda of stuff that I wont invest over 20 minutes in (absurd humor tends to get boring when it loses it's novelty), but whenever I find one that's really good - I'll show it to all of my friends. Having a decent budget, cast and production quality also really makes a big difference with what can be accomplished, so random absurdist youtubers usually can't provide the same experience. The fact that the Reno 911 reboot is the only thing on quibi doing well sort of confirms that the "weird comedy" genre is still underutilized.
Edit: Apparently someone has already written about this trend far more eloquently than I did: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/aug/13/how-did...
But I suspect that "YouTube celebrities" are not something that platforms like Quibi can tap into. I'd say the whole phenomenon could easily be a symptom of which platforms kids (<18) have easy, free access to. Add in network effects - if a plurality of kids is watching and talking about some drama unfolding among elite YouTubers, it's very easy to turn that plurality into a majority.
Even though I fit the bill of watching YouTube rather than TV, I don't think Quibi would be successful by hiring "Dude Perfect" or whoever (just to pull the first name I recognized off the trending tab). Personally, I have about 50 subscriptions on YouTube, and the median channel has only ~330k subscribers. The biggest (Last Week Tonight) has less than 10 million. Taking me as an indicator of what millenials are doing would be the worst kind of anecdata, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that a majority of people my age aren't following any of the so-called celebrities. What's a name that would pull me to a new platform? ... I can't come up with one, actually. And kids are on YouTube because it's free and easy to access - they're not potential Quibi subscribers either.
(Sorry for the long comment, yours was interesting and provoked some introspection.)