February 2, 2023 issue | Total Issue 3135
Just one month has passed in 2023, and a 9-point drama - "Crazy Race" and two 8-point dramas - "Go to a Windy Place" and "The Three-Body Problem" have already been released.
For this year's domestic drama market, this is undoubtedly a surprise start. Some people predict that this year may be a big year for dramas, and some people are worried that the overall Douban score of domestic dramas will become higher and higher, the gold content will decline, and the market will move towards false prosperity.
This concern is justified. Three years ago, 7 points were already considered word-of-mouth dramas; By last year, 8-point dramas became the threshold for good dramas; Today, the standard for a good drama is approaching 9 points. What is the concept of one 9-minute drama and two 8-minute dramas a month?
Judging from the Douban list in the past decade, there are three 9-point dramas in 2021, namely "The Age of Awakening", "Mountains and Seas" and "Meritorious Achievements", all of which are main theme dramas; In 2020, there are two 9-point dramas "Want to See You" and "The Silent Truth"; The 9-point dramas in 2019 are two Taiwanese dramas "Our Distance from Evil" and "The Cultivation of a Common Girl", and the mainland dramas did not score 9 points; In 2016, it was "Together Through the Window", and in 2015, it was "Langya List" and "Mao Liar".
It is worth mentioning that 2014 is the year with the most 9-point dramas in the past ten years, with 4 "War Changsha", "Red", "No War in Beiping" and "Parental Love"; In contrast, in the top 10 high-scoring lists in 2018 and 2017, 9-point dramas are absent.
However, this does not mean that 2014 is the most prosperous and high-quality year for domestic dramas, nor does it mean that the year in which 9-point dramas are absent is the trough period of national dramas.
Take these dramas in 2014, they all entered the 9-point drama list with the precipitation of time, and the scores became higher and higher; And 2017, when 9 dramas were zero, was a big year for domestic dramas, and that year, different types of dramas such as "In the Name of the People", "White Deer Plain", "The Rise of the Great Qin Empire", "The Army Division Sima Yi's Army and Division Alliance", "Chicken Feathers Fly to the Sky" and "Kite" competed on the same stage, and explosions were frequent. Rao is so, and the anti-corruption drama "In the Name of the People" is only stable at 8.3 points.
Today, the anti-black drama "Crazy" that the whole people watch is very close to the grand situation of "In the Name of the People" from the comprehensive dimensions of broadcast volume, topic popularity, coverage and audience reputation, but the Douban score is 0.7 points higher than "In the Name of the People". Is there really a difference in the rank between the two dramas? In terms of the fullness, completeness and depth of thought of the plot, "In the Name of the People" is even better. In terms of the typology of the story, the sense of gameplay and the color of the characters, "Crazy" is higher. Overall quality among peers.
The domestic drama Douban score "inflation", not a day or two.
Phased "inflation"
The main purpose and principle of the scoring system of Douban platform is to "try to restore the average view of the public on a work", the scoring mechanism adopts a five-star system, the calculation method is to calculate the average, and the "unquantifiable" viewing experience and user evaluation are visualized to give other audiences a reference for decision-making.
Every platform has its genes, and for a long time, Douban users have a natural chain of disdain for works of different countries and genres: filters for overseas dramas, critical stances on domestic dramas, tolerance of niche and literary works, and disdain for popcorn-attribute works. What kind of users create what kind of platform, the industry has become accustomed to such a Douban ecology.
2018 was a turning point. This year, more viewers and fans poured into Douban, and the number of ratings increased suddenly, raising the average score of domestic dramas. Among the top 20 domestic dramas with Douban ratings, more than 50% are dramas after 2018; From 2018 to 2020, the average score of the top 10 domestic dramas rose from 7.8 to 8.5. Sinking users are more tolerant of domestic dramas than literary and artistic youth and "pan-middle-class" audiences, which is the first stage of Douban score inflation.
On the other hand, works such as "Niang Dao" and "Pretty Li Huizhen" were given low scores in retaliation, which also made the Douban score a developer of public sentiment. Since then, the Douban score has gradually become a "battleground for soldiers" in domestic dramas, with aborigines, passers-by audiences, fans, film parties and marketers fighting in it.
More than one industry insider revealed to the film and television monologue that during that time, many film parties would use fewer user samples to brush a high opening score to create a good start, and then let the score slowly fall back as the scoring base expanded, and finally complete a scoring KPI within the range that the platform can accept, which has long become a "time difference tactic".
And all dramas starring traffic stars, the scoring area will almost stage a pink and black war, before the release of a drama, fans organize water armies to score five stars, black fans to give one star, "C-type" distribution is not uncommon. In 2021, due to the Douban scores of the two dramas "Feng Qi Luoyang" and "Who is the Murderer", the Douban official reiterated the scoring mechanism that "ratings and reviews before the release or start of film and television dramas are not counted in the overall score".
For the above cheating scoring phenomenon, Douban has established an anti-cheat mechanism to "eliminate abnormal scoring" through technology and manual identification, but it cannot completely eliminate the cheating factors. Many domestic dramas have encountered the situation of opening scores more and more slowly, or opening scores only after broadcasting, or even not opening points.
It is worth noting that cheating on brushes, small samples, and emotional scoring will affect the real evaluation of a drama. If the former can be identified by the platform mechanism and the number of references, then large-scale emotional scoring cannot be distinguished and prevented.
Since Douban users can give some domestic dramas low emotional scores, they can give other domestic dramas high emotional scores. As a result, domestic dramas that can provide emotional value to the audience, the ratings began to rise, and the second stage of Douban score inflation came.
Emotionally behind high scores
First, give high marks to old dramas.
Time is the yardstick to test whether a drama is classic, and it is also a tool for adult audiences to re-"price" TV series for childhood love to watch, such as "The Legend of Sword and Fairy", which now scores 9.1 points, which is a typical "late-up" high-scoring TV series. Every time the news of the remake of "Immortal Sword" comes out, every time another bad-quality fairy tale drama spices the audience's eyes, the rating of this drama will increase.
In these 9.1 points, it is difficult to say how much emotional moisture can be squeezed out, but old dramas like this that get high scores with feelings are still being produced.
On the other hand, because of the bitter rotten drama for a long time. In the past two years, audiences are obviously more likely to "give high scores for excitement" for new dramas. For example, last year's 8.8 points for "Menghualu", now give "Crazy" 9.0 points, give "Go to a Windy Place" 8.4 points, and even "Canglan Tips" now has 8.1 points...
Of course, there are factors behind the improvement of the quality of domestic dramas, but there are also types and theme dividends. In other words, domestic dramas do not stand on the same starting line to receive ratings from the audience. A drama can get an emotional high score, which to some extent quenches the audience's thirst for scarce genre dramas.
For example, ancient puppets and fairy tale dramas pull their crotches all year round, and "Menghualu" and "Canglan Recipe" themselves are considered high-quality in the field of ancient puppet dramas and fairy tale dramas, which are already rare; Previously, there was no pastoral healing drama such as "Go to a Windy Place" in China; And such a vivid sweep of black, writing the history of the villain has not been seen for many years, the scale and excitement of "Crazy" make the audience feel amazing.
Different tracks and starting lines lead to different scoring standards for the audience and cannot be compared horizontally. For example, historical dramas, spy war dramas and even suspense dramas are considered mature types in domestic dramas, and the starting line is different from other dramas, and the audience is less excited to give high scores, and the score is relatively non-inflationary.
One advantage of the increasing number of high-scoring dramas is that it is easy to lower the threshold for decision-making, thereby promoting audience consumption and chasing dramas. But a scoring system that can be virtuous and authoritative must have a degree of distinction. The internal scores of platforms such as Maoyan and Weibo are often 8 or 9 points, and the degree of differentiation is not high, basically unable to give people reference, and the score content is low.
The rating of new dramas will be "inflation", and old dramas will have feelings to kill moisture, in the final analysis, it is still the audience's low expectations and subsequent similar works are not strong. Now the 9.0 score of "Crazy" is not low, for example, if the Douban score of "Crazy" five years after "Crazy" has increased, it is likely because: five years after "Crazy", the anti-black drama is lackluster.
The same applies to the increase in the ratings of old dramas in the past. The extraordinarily prominent of a drama is always related to the overall lack of a track, which is the so-called "all rely on peers to set off".
Therefore, for the long-term development of domestic dramas, sometimes a high score is not necessarily a happy thing. The same is true for the audience, if they are all high-scoring dramas at a glance, how to identify the selection and distinguish the authenticity? This all increases the decision-making cost of the audience.
Fortunately, in addition to the overall score, the Douban scoring mechanism also has a "friend rating" option, and users can also refer to the ratings of the fans they follow and people with similar tastes to their watches. To some extent, this can resist the confusion caused by Douban score inflation at the micro level.
【Text/Flying Fish】