Quibi was 'early' for the microseries wave. A new company hopes to time it just right

This is read by an automated voice.Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.

See more from the L.A.Times in Google Search.

Set us as preferred Jana Winograde, former president of Showtime, and Susan Rovner, former president of Warner Bros.TV, have their own meet-cute.

The pair first met three decades ago, when they worked at ABC.“We locked eyes, and we’ve been close friends ever since, danced at each other’s weddings, held each other’s babies,” says Winograde, speaking via videoconference from Rovner’s Encino home.Then, at the end of 2024, a friend started talking to them about vertical storytelling just as a burgeoning new form of entertainment for shorter attention spans, known as the microseries, began taking off in Asia.Winograde and Rovner soon teamed up with Lloyd Braun, former chairman of WME, to found the original microseries studio and platform aTwist, originally known as MicroCo.

They plan to launch in the late summer and have already announced unscripted deals and a partnership with BET.Some of their microseries will be shown at movie theaters during previews.The co-founders also revealed to The Envelope that they have an exclusive deal with Patti Stanger to bring the “Millionaire Matchmaker” franchise to the microseries world, both in unscripted and scripted.“We’re trying to take the best of the vertical world and the best of what we learned in streaming and traditional linear television and put them together,” says Winograde.

“We felt like this was the way that we could take all of our storytelling abilities and apply it to this.”“In three seconds, we have something that grabs your attention,” says Rovner.“The episode length is two minutes and under; we’ve sometimes gone up to three minutes.”Winograde and Rovner spoke about their foray into this new type of programming, how they hope to differentiate themselves and more.

Read excerpts from the conversation below.Why do you think microseries are o...