Image source @ Visual China
Text | DataENT Digital Entertainment, author | Xiao Yu, editor | Single Win, design | Winter Snow
The competition between TV stations is always fierce.
Buying a drama is better than ratings, program production should break its head, and the party should also break its head for ratings. Take the New Year's Eve party a week ago, CCTV and five satellite televisions each invited a group of stars to support the field, and they all wanted to compete for the top spot in the annual battlefield.
While live television is important, online live streaming channels are also indispensable.
In the process of counting the new year's eve network live broadcast, several entertainment jun found an interesting thing: in addition to the hunan satellite TV New Year's Eve party in Mango TV network live broadcast, Oriental Satellite TV also chose to broadcast exclusively on the video platform OfTV, which also belongs to SMG.
Tv stations doing online video platforms are not new.
On April 20, 2014, Mango TV, an Internet video platform under Hunan Radio and Television, was officially launched, which launched the first shot of the integration of traditional radio and television into New Internet media.
In July 2015, Zhejiang Satellite TV also created its own online video platform China Blue TV, which mainly provides all video column content of zhejiang radio and television group channels.
Four years later, big brother CCTV came out and launched the first national 5G new media platform CCTV on November 20, 2019.
Then to the launch of Baishi TV in September 2020, it is the only video streaming platform under SMG and Oriental Pearl New Media Group, and Oriental Satellite TV can be said to be "brothers".
As of today, there are four online video platforms on the market that are deeply tied to TV stations.
From traditional TV to streaming platforms, new competition between TV stations is opening up.
However, this time, there are more opponents than in the past.
Lonely radio and television, the last self-help?
Why are TV stations popping into online videos? The reason is simple -
Fewer and fewer people are watching TV.
According to QuestMobile statistics, as of June 2021, the monthly active users of China's mobile Internet reached 1.164 billion, a net increase of 9.62 million year-on-year.
Image source: QuestMobile
In the various first-level industries of the mobile Internet, mobile video ranks second with a penetration rate of 97.7%.
Corresponding to the high penetration rate, the video platform has entered a golden period of rapid development. Compared with the many restrictions of TV stations, online video platforms provide a more free scheduling space, each platform purchases the network copyright of programs and episodes, the scale of users continues to expand, at the same time, variety shows and episodes have also entered the era of network self-production, and even platform self-made content is reverse output to TV stations.
Television stations entered an embarrassing period, and the industry bubble raised the purchase price of copyright content. For example, TV series, the "sky-high copyright" of many platform self-made dramas has made TV stations unable to bear it, and TV stations have fallen from their previous absolute dominance, and even in the past two years, there has been a broadcast form of "first network backstage".
According to the statistics of Yunhe Data, in the TOP20 of the 2021 serial drama effective broadcast hegemony list, online dramas accounted for 12 seats, with a market share of 8.86%, while the market share of TV dramas was only 5.21%.
Judging from the new situation on the series, whether it is 2020 or 2021, the amount of new network dramas will be much higher than that of TV series.
Image source: Cloud-converged data
The rise of short video platforms has robbed many users of fragmented time and taken away their attention. All of this points to one result: the appeal of television sets to the public is gradually decreasing, or even disappearing.
TCL data shows that due to the impact of mobile terminals such as smartphones and tablets, the average daily operating rate of TVs has dropped from 70% in 2016 to 30% in 2019. When everyone sits around and watches TV less and less, brushing their mobile phones and tablets with their heads down has become the norm of modern people's lives.
The television industry is like this, and the development of television stations is naturally not as good as in the past. According to the statistical communiqué of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, the revenue of traditional radio and television advertising in 2020 was 78.958 billion yuan, down 20.95% year-on-year.
The traditional profit model of TV stations is being greatly challenged.
From these factors, embracing the trend of integration and creating its own streaming media is probably a self-help operation of traditional TV stations.
Hunan Radio and Television, which seized the opportunity early, has built Mango TV into the only profitable video platform in China. According to the annual report of Mango Super Media, in 2020, the operating income of Mango TV was 10.003 billion yuan and the net profit was 1.775 billion yuan, achieving profitability for three consecutive years, an increase of 83.17% year-on-year. For details, see the previous article of the digital entertainment jun: "Long video platform Huashan on the sword, Mango TV chases the deer"
Image source; Mango Super Media Report
However, China Blue TV, which is only fifteen months away from the launch time of Mango TV, is still struggling in the sea of suffering.
Tv stations develop streaming, it is not so simple.
TV streaming, standing on the shoulders of giants?
The success of Mango TV is inseparable from Hunan Radio and Television.
In the early days of its establishment, it can almost be said that it attracted the first users by relying on the exclusive copyright of Hunan Satellite TV's variety show.
Whether it is the seasonly broadcast of "Where Did Daddy Go", "I Am a Singer" and "Flowers and Teenagers", or the regular variety shows "Happy Base Camp" and "Every Day Upwards"... The hot TV variety shows were sold to Mango TV at a lower copyright price, allowing this fledgling platform to effectively pull new.
To this day, Mango TV still covers the broadcast rights of all variety shows on Hunan Satellite TV, and most of them are solo broadcasts.
On the other hand, Mango TV also uses the advantages of Hunan Satellite TV's program production to vigorously develop self-made variety shows. In 2015, Mango TV produced a full-time panoramic live reality show "Perfect Holiday", which kicked off the self-made prologue.
The following year, the strategy of self-control was officially launched. In this year, Mango TV produced the "Star Detective" that later became the signature IP, the mother parenting parenting variety show "Mom is Superman", and the satellite TV's ace project "Where Daddy Goes" was also transferred from Taiwan to the network and became the exclusive webcast variety show of Mango TV.
Since then, Mango TV has tried to explore the road of self-control, and has repeatedly achieved good results in variety projects, and the self-made variety shows "Our Band" and "Mother-in-Law and Mother" have also been reverse-exported to other satellite television stars.
It has also developed a number of self-produced film and television projects. According to Yunhe statistics, in 2021, Mango will launch a total of 49 solo dramas, which is the highest proportion of solo broadcasts among the four major video platforms. This year's word-of-mouth web drama "I'm Fine in Other Places" is Mango TV's monsoon theater solo drama.
According to the announcement of Mango Super Media, at the end of 2020, the number of effective members of Mango TV reached 36.13 million, an increase of 96.68% over the end of 2019, and during the reporting period, the membership income is expected to reach 3254.69 million yuan, an increase of 92% year-on-year.
In QuestMobile's September 2021 online video app monthly active list, Mango TV's monthly active users have exceeded 200 million, and it is only 6 million differences from Youku.
Another TV contestant in the top ten is CCTV, which has increased the size of its monthly activity to 20 million in two years.
Unlike Mango TV in the satellite TV copyright content and self-made film and television comprehensive force, the media attributes of central video are stronger, and it has received attention by relying on evening parties and news live broadcasts in the early stage of its launch.
In January 2020, the construction process of Leishen Mountain and Huoshenshan Hospital was viewed by nearly 200 million people, making "cloud supervision" a hot word on the Internet, and the live broadcast of this process is the central video.
Image source: Network
With strong news resource advantages and the ability to mobilize and integrate, the route of central video is more inclined to "live aggregation", not only can watch the real-time content of CCTV series channels and David TV, but also directly hit various major events, sports events, literary and art evenings, news scenes are not left behind, like the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games live broadcast, it has attracted a lot of new users for central video.
For the platform to be profitable, it comes down to "open source" and "throttling".
At present, the two different routes of platforms of Mango TV and CCTV can create their own highlights in the competition, and it is not unrelated to the fact that they make the greatest use of the advantages of the radio and television system on which they rely.
The next Mango TV, will it still appear?
Compared with other video platforms, BesTV is more like a backward growth from large screen to small screen, and develops a mobile video platform on the basis of the original IPTV BesTV.
It was born at the latest, drawing on a lot of experience.
Since its launch more than a year ago, Baishi TV and Oriental Satellite TV have jointly created at least four variety shows, which has indeed played a significant role in the user pulling of new platforms. The 2021 interim report released by Oriental Pearl New Media Co., Ltd. pointed out that Baishi TV achieved more than 6 million new registered users and exceeded 4 million monthly active users.
In terms of dramas, "The World of Two People" and "Also Ordinary", which are broadcast exclusively on Oriental Satellite TV, are also like many Hunan Satellite TV solo dramas, which exclusively grant the network broadcasting copyright to Baishi TV, which even launched a campaign for members to watch 2 episodes first.
Although it started late, it is also convenient to "check and fill in the gaps", it also dabbles in the field of micro-short dramas according to the current trend of the times, adding short videos and e-commerce sections to the app, and seems to be ambitious to become a player with comprehensive development without shortcomings.
Image source: Blockbuster TV
But the effect of drawing a tiger from a cat doesn't seem so obvious.
In terms of variety shows, Baishi TV lacks the production gene of Mango TV to inherit radio and television, and many of the programs it co-produced with Oriental Satellite TV have strong fan circle attributes. Most of the guests invited by "Perfect Summer" are draft idols, "Pick up the move!" "Seniors" is based on the idol group era youth group as the core, and "Golden Song Youth" as a stage competition variety show, it is even more jokingly called "draft love beans re-employment".
These programs have strong stickiness during the broadcast period, and the new is obvious, but the popularity is lacking, it is difficult to play the long-tail effect, and not all of them have the advantage of solo broadcasting, "Perfect Summer Season 1" and "Pick Up the Trick!" "Seniors" is also co-broadcast with Tencent Video.
The head variety shows of Oriental Satellite TV, such as the "Extreme Challenge" series, still choose to distribute the network copyright to online video platforms such as Aitengyou, and "Chasing the Light" is co-produced with Youku.
From the perspective of dramas, if you do not intervene from the production link, the purchase of copyright content alone will inevitably lead to the scarcity of exclusive drama resources and insufficient attractiveness, and it will be difficult for Blockbuster TV to cultivate its own loyal user base. Film and television production is another long journey.
Compared with other platforms, the biggest advantage of this satellite TV streaming media is probably that it does not have to watch advertisements, but this also means that it lacks a large source of income, which is not a long-term solution.
Of course, compared with China Blue TV, which is still in the stage of broadcasting Zhejiang Satellite TV variety shows, Baishi TV has already caught up.
Zhejiang Radio and Television is also full of ambition, and the first anniversary of the launch of the China Blue TV client has exceeded 25 million downloads. At the same time, it also announced its entry into live broadcasting, launched "Blue Charm Live Broadcasting", and will set up a million "Creative Fund" to fully promote the global solicitation plan for online variety show creative programs without variety shows and no networks.
Source: New Blue Network
But these grand plans have passed over time and have not been followed.
And in recent years, Zhejiang Satellite TV's popular variety show has never been broadcast exclusively in China Blue TV, and several entertainment jun counted most of the weekend evening variety shows that Zhejiang Satellite TV launched this year, and China Blue TV does not own the network exclusive broadcast copyright of a program, and even the network copyright of "Don't Underestimate Me" is not in its hands.
In the mobile video industry, competition has always been fierce.
Mango TV, which has successfully transformed out of the pain, is also slightly inferior in the endless struggle with the three platforms of Aitengyou. The central video backed by CCTV also lowered its body and led the anchors to launch network variety shows that are closer to young people, such as "Summer of Yangyoung" and "Winter Warm Yangyoung".
In the face of the impact of new media, the development of streaming media platforms is an inevitable trend for head TV stations to transform into integrated media.
Nearly seven years behind, Blockbuster TV took the first step. But whether there will be the next Mango TV is still unknown.
After all, from the moment it enters the game, it will no longer face more than just competition between TV stations.