1. The content they produced is way too long to for the time period they're trying to occupy. You might spend 10 minutes ordering a coffee but that 10 minutes will be split into at least three segments whose length is arbitrary each time. This wouldn't matter so much if point two didn't exist

2. They created the type of content that needs to be paid attention to from start to end. They typically tried to take long form video content and squeeze it into a 10 minute format. This makes it entirely unsuitable when compared to the types of content people actually consume during the periods targetted.

If you look at what people do during these time periods at the moment, you'll see that they're all very resilient to interruption by being unaffected by a lack of constant attention (scrolling twitter/facebook), having each piece of content be short enough that you'll likely be starting/finishing one when interrupted (tiktok), or by being a background task that doesn't demand constant attention (music/podcasts).

The core idea behind Quibi seems to fail on all these levels, the ineptitude displayed by attempting to charge for an idea no one wanted, while also locking down the platform/content so hard people that couldn't clip/screengrab it is just a cherry on top. That it got to the stage that it did just seems to be an indictment of where we're at with the economy and society.

I suspect this is a fairly big issue among commuters who aren't taking the subway (which, in America, is practically no one outside of NYC).

They probably all have personal chauffeurs or used uber black cars so for them that was a typical commute.