Text/Tehran
Before you sang it, we have appeared.
The confrontation between "Futuyuan", "Go to a Windy Place" and "Youth Song Xing" has not yet ended, Tencent Video and Linghe Culture have joined hands with the sci-fi drama "Three-Body Problem", iQiyi and Liubai Film and Television's criminal investigation drama "Crazy" and Youku Spring Festival masterpiece "Country Love 15" are all ready to play. On the other hand, Station B is also strongly divided with the help of the two animations "Three-Body Problem" and "Chinese Strange Tan".
A new round of platform battles has begun, but the winners will obviously need to wait and see.
iQIYI:
The "Theater of the Mist" is to be continued
"Costume" burst into high mood
"Let's climb the mountain together?"
In 2020, driven by the two word-of-mouth dramas "Hidden Corner" and "The Silent Truth", "Mist Theater" not only found a new grip for iQiyi's industrialization process of online dramas, but also raised the overall trend of suspense dramas, and provoked a market race with a larger scope and greater investment.
This is both fortunate and unfortunate.
While these two dramas successively achieved the reputation of "Misty Theater" with two high-scoring answers that exceeded market expectations, they also firmly laid the bottom line of the quality of the theater.
However, the reality is that the entire market and industry from "White Night Chase" to "Hidden Corner" and "Silent Truth" have been exploring for nearly 3 years, and "Mist Theater" is an in-depth exploration of iQIYI's brand operation and monetization space and boutique short drama model before the industry.
Since it is an exploration and how can it always be smooth sailing, coupled with the fact that suspense short dramas also have a high threshold at the level of content creation, iQIYI pays great attention to differentiation and innovation in the entire content output. Based on this, the "Theater of the Mist" has become dull after rapidly creating highlights, which is unexpected and reasonable.
However, the audience's disappointment is still inevitable, especially after "Returning Daughter" fell off a cliff from 8.3 Douban high score to 6.3 points.
But this does not mean that the "Theater of the Mist" has lost the possibility of continuing the pomp and circumstance.
According to the scheduling information released by the platform, "Echo" directed by Feng Xiaogang and starring Song Jia, Wang Yang, Bao Bell, etc. is expected to be launched in January and February "Misty Theater". In addition, the other three new dramas to be broadcast in "Thirteen Years in the Dust", "Bionic World" and "Moses on the Plain" have also received good pre-broadcast attention with their unique story focus and star-studded creative lineup.
On the other side of the story, the Douban score of "Futuyuan", jointly produced and broadcast by iQiyi and Straw Bear, remains at 7.1, and according to Maoyan Professional Edition, the drama won the first week of 2023 Maoyan online drama popularity list.
According to the scheduling information released by iQiyi, after "Futuyuan", the martial arts drama "The Legend of Yunxiang" starring Chen Xiao and Mao Xiaotong and the costume historical drama "Daming under the Microscope" adapted from Ma Boyong's historical book of the same name will be launched in January and February.
However, although these two costume dramas have the confidence to be expected, there are also certain variables.
Although martial arts dramas have risen significantly in the past two years, this rise is more reflected in the increase in quantity, such as "Youth Song Xing" can generally stir up the mainstream discourse power of the market is a few works. On the other hand, up to now, "Chang'an Twelve Hours" is still the "ceiling" of Ma Boyong's adaptations.
Not surprisingly, in addition to the above two dramas, "Open Girl Comics", "Come on Today", "Our Day" and "Grandma's New World" will also be launched in the near future, and "Crazy" will succeed "Walking to the Wind" on the 14th to land on the prime file of Central Eight.
On the whole, iQIYI's high-quality drama output has entered the normalization stage, and it is also foreseeable that with this high-quality and diversified continuous supply, iQIYI is likely to further increase users' willingness to pay, and then drive high flexibility in performance.
Youku:
Two "dark horses" pulled
Many major dramas have been reviewed and are waiting to be broadcast
As far as the main creative lineup is concerned, Youku's current two opening dramas "Youth Song Xing" and "I May Have Met a Savior" are much inferior to Aiqiyi, but what is surprising is that these two dramas have not only earned word of mouth for Youku, but also created popularity.
The new martial arts drama "Youth Song Xing" jointly produced by Youku, Morning Star Shengshi and China Film Niannian quickly became the industry's fastest lighthouse popularity drama after it was launched, and at the same time, with the deepening of the plot, the popularity of the drama in Youku station also rose all the way to more than 10,000, and successively topped the market share list of Yunhe and Lighthouse feature films.
Behind this is the promotion of the show's own word-of-mouth fermentation, and it is also inseparable from Youku's operational assistance.
Soon after the solo broadcast of "Youth Song Xing" was launched, Youku innovatively launched the starring team-building variety show "Youth Special Plan", which met the diversified needs of users for chasing dramas through the staggered update of "drama + life fan".
Prior to this, Youku also launched the "heart tremor function" during the broadcast of "Love at First Sight", arranged the starring "star call" for "Acquaintance with Junchu" and "Agarwood Like Crumbs", and effectively enhanced the sense of drama atmosphere of "Ignite Me, Warm You" by designing "Fireworks Rain".
Recently, Youku also combined with the needs of users to watch dramas and innovatively set up the "one-click skip Ganlu Temple" function for "The Legend of Zhen Huan", users only need to enter "return to the palace" in the comment area of episode 45 to directly skip the plot of Ganlu Temple and parachute to Zhen Huan's return to the palace.
From this, we can once again affirm that the outbreak shown by Youku in the past two years is not accidental, but the inevitable result of the platform's refined operation and continuous cultivation in the field of dramas.
According to the information released by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, the two popular costume dramas "Long Moon Ember Ming" and "Anle Legend" that Youku plans to launch this year have been reviewed, on the other hand, "New Wrong Flower Palanquin Married to Lang" starring the newly promoted Xiaohuatian Xiwei has opened online reservations, and "Country Love 15", known as "Spring Festival must-have", has also been finalized.
Tencent Video:
Towards the enigmatic "three-body problem"
"Love" worth looking forward to
Before the official announcement of "The Three-Body Problem", Tencent Video was obviously the most lacking in existence in this "opening drama" competition, and this was largely due to the lack of head works.
In fact, as early as the Q4 quarter of 2022, Tencent Video obviously began to "rot", and only two head works "The Two Eight Laws of Love" and "County Party Committee Compound" were taken out throughout the quarter. What is even more embarrassing is that these two works have failed to live up to expectations, especially "County Party Committee Compound".
This "pre-explosion" produced by Noon Sunshine and bringing together Hu Ge, Wu Yue, Zhang Xincheng, Huang Lei, Li Guangjie, Liu Tao and many other highly recognized actors not only failed to become another "Mountain and Sea Love", but once again shook the golden signboard of Noon Sun's "Chinese drama façade".
As of press time, the drama's Douban score is only 6.7, and the number of ratings is only more than 70,000.
Based on this, "The Three-Body Problem" is of greater significance to Tencent Video. After all, in the first three quarters of 2022, Tencent Video membership has been negative for three consecutive quarters, falling to 120 million, and judging from the content broadcast performance in the fourth quarter, this data is most likely not optimistic.
However, judging from the broadcast performance of the "Three-Body Problem" animation, Tencent Video wants to use the drama version of "The Three-Body Problem" to pull back the continuous decline in the membership size curve, which is a great challenge.
Although the other four pre-scheduled January's "Love Only", "Heavy Purple", "Snow Eagle Lord" and "Illuminate You" all have IP or star halo blessings, if you put them in the entire drama market, Tencent Video only "Love Only" can rely on.
The drama is produced by the owner of Ningmeng Films, focusing on the emotional status of urban people. This theme has always been the longboard of Ningmeng Pictures, and the starring lineup of Wu Lei & Zhou Yutong gives this drama a unique point of view, in addition, Ningmeng Pictures consolidated its influence and appeal on the C-end last year with "Beyond", "Coward", "Twenty Not Confused 2", etc.
Mango TV:
Liu Yifei held up half of the sky
Yunhe data shows that in 2022, the cumulative effective broadcast of positive films on the whole network will decline by 11% year-on-year, and Youaiteng will also decline to varying degrees in terms of sub-platforms, only Mango TV has shown a year-on-year increase, an increase of 9%.
But unfortunately, this unique rise did not support Mango's advertising performance.
According to the financial report, in the third quarter of 2022, Mango Super Media's advertising business revenue continued to decline year-on-year, down 26.33%. Affected by this, the company's revenue in the first three quarters fell by 12% year-on-year to 10.24 billion yuan, and the net profit attributable to the parent fell by 15.24% year-on-year to 1.678 billion yuan.
It should be emphasized that although the revenue of Mango TV's membership business in the first three quarters increased by 7.83% year-on-year, due to the long-term impact of the content model dominated by variety shows, the main source of profit provided by Mango TV for Mango Super Media is still investment advertising. Not only that, Mango Super Media has clearly emphasized in the 2022Q1 quarterly earnings conference call that advertising is a model that must not be abandoned.
From "Goodbye Lover 2", which frequently appeared on Weibo because it was too horse-grabbing, to "Happy Departure 2", which scored a high score of 9.5 Douban because of its extraordinary joy, to the ongoing "Detective 8 New Year Concert", we can clearly feel that Mango TV is trying to consolidate its longboard advantage.
At the same time, Mango TV's positive attitude to make up for the shortcomings of the series is also extremely obvious, such as the launch of "Go to a Place with Wind" starring Liu Yifei.
Maoyan Professional Edition shows that "Go to a Windy Place" has won the daily crown of Maoyan TV drama 8 times since its launch, and the daily crown of 6 satellite TV live broadcast attention, with a cumulative number of views exceeding 1.1 billion.
It can be said that "Go to the Windy Place" is a good start for Mango TV in the drama battle for long videos in 2023. According to the list of online explosions, Mango TV has also reserved a number of big dramas this year, among which "Lady's Character" starring Wan Qian and Liu Mintao, "My Human Fireworks" starring Yang Yang and Wang Churan, "Camp with Love" starring Wang Hedi and Bai Lu and "Da Song Youth Chronicle 2" are all worth paying attention to.
Station B:
One volt together
Create odd talk with "strange tan"
Station B is located in another market - animation.
Stepping on the tail of 2022, the "Three-Body Problem" animation created by Station B for 5 years has finally been unveiled, and the super popularity of the original IP matches the eye-catching signatures such as "special effects investment of more than 100 million" and "the largest animation project in the magnitude of Station B", and "Three-Body Problem" quickly showed a head heat effect as soon as it was broadcast.
The number of views on the station soared to 86 million in one hour of broadcasting, with more than 120 million views in one day, and the number of simultaneous online viewers on the station set a new high for the number of online users on the platform. As of press time, the animation has reached 300 million+ views on the site, and has 7 million+ series followers.
However, in sharp contrast to the ultra-high traffic, the Douban word-of-mouth curve of the "Three-Body Problem" animation has continued to decline with the depth of the plot, and has now fallen below the passing line, and the audience who gave 1-star and 2-star reviews accounted for more than 58%.
Although it failed to consolidate the platform's animation content reputation as hoped, with the "Three-Body Problem" animation, Station B still brushed up its presence and achieved very intuitive commercial benefits.
The advertisement chief of the online "Three-Body Problem" animation has a title of 100 million, a second identity of 70 million, a third identity of 40 million, and a game linkage of 30 million. If the price is true, the insertion of this item B site with advertising is enough to recover the cost.
At present, the "Three-Body Problem" animation has four opening advertisements of Changan Automobile, HP OMEN, ROKID, and Nanfu Battery, of which Changan Automobile is the exclusive title, and there are also many brand implants such as China Construction Bank, Honor, and China Telecom in the play.
On the other side of the story, the "Chinese Wonder Tan" that followed made up for the shortcomings of the "Three-Body Problem" animation, allowing B to earn a "pot of money" at the word-of-mouth level.