Rhino Entertainment Original
Text|Fat Department Editor|Park Fang
As early as the end of 2021, when the whole year was resumed, in the face of a group of niche dark horses such as "Royal Gift", "Love is Delicious" and "I'm Very Good in Another Country", the industry has made a judgment that more "dark horse dramas" will emerge in subdivided categories.
At about the same time, the whole industry rolled out cost reduction and efficiency improvement, followed by the decision to enlarge S-class and A+ grade projects on the platform side and "eliminate the pseudo-waist". This makes the little black horse at the waist and tail almost disappear in 2022, and a few so-called dark horses actually express that they exceed expectations, such as "Twinkle and Twinkle Star" and "Tang Dynasty Mystery" are basically the works of large companies, and the volume is not small.
And market development seems to prove the correctness of this strategy, from "The World" to "Menghualu" and "Happiness to Wanjia" at the beginning of last year to "Crazy" and "Go to the Windy Place" at the beginning of this year, a series of "white horse dramas" have soared throughout the year.
To a certain extent, this also squeezes the production space of "dark horse dramas", looking back at 2021, most of the related works are actually in the same period of mediocre performance of the head drama, relying on outstanding word-of-mouth to achieve a sudden rise, and the continuous explosive output makes it difficult for some of last year's high-reputation content to spread.
Entering the spring of 2023, under the role of various aspects, the logic of "dark horse drama" is running through again, and shows the efficiency of pulling the performance of dramas with good word-of-mouth, such as iQiyi's "Daming's Silk Case under the Microscope" (referred to as "Daming"), Youku's "Ligong: Old Events in the Northeast" (referred to as "Ligong") and so on.
This return is also inevitable from the perspective of industry development.
In 2023, how is the "dark horse" refined?
The so-called "dark horse" is actually a consequentialist concept, and the corresponding "white horse" is also the same.
In November last year, Tencent Video used the concept of "white horse drama" to explain the next content direction of the platform, and proposed to produce a large number of S-class explosive "white horse drama" to seize the territory of mainstream users. This and iQiyi's proposal of "eliminating pseudo-waist" actually points to the same strategy, that is, to improve efficiency and reduce risks by developing head projects.
For the platform, if an S-level drama can reap the S-level broadcast effect, then this is a suitable transaction, even if the broadcast effect is A+, it can be accepted; However, if it is a drama below Grade A, in the absence of head stars and production investment, the possibility of becoming a good drama is actually minimal, and even the traffic value brought to the platform may be negative.
Compared with the latter, the advantage of the head drama is that, on the one hand, from the perspective of theme and volume, compared with the "small and beautiful" of pendant content, it can often cover a wider audience; On the other hand, in terms of commercial efficiency, the probability of small and medium-cost dramas appearing in high-quality is very small, which also means that the business of "small and broad" is equal to extremely high risk and extremely low efficiency.
In the context of the industry beginning to seek breakeven, cost reduction and efficiency increase, magnifying the head has become a major trend last year, and more stories in the industry have become A+ dramas broadcast S-grade effects, S dramas broadcast S+ effects, and so on.
In the spring of 2023, in the environment of no absolute head dramas on the air, a number of word-of-mouth works have once again staged the "dark horse" road of low opening and high walking. To deconstruct this process, let's start with the play itself.
In fact, "Daming" should not belong to the category of small and medium-cost dark horses, but this is a very experimental work that greatly raises the risk, regardless of the form of 14 episodes of historical short dramas or the story based on taxes, there are market acceptance problems. The main creative team's understanding of this is very clear, Ma Boyong said that "(any investor) will feel inappropriate, the market will not be good".
In contrast, "Ligong", which has no head stars, a niche theme, and almost no publicity, is even more difficult to open the market.
In fact, Youku is already the most suitable platform for the show, as many comments said, the male protagonist Shang Quanliang played by Fan Wei is almost the middle-aged and elderly Fan Debiao Benbiao, and Biao's "Ma Dashuai" and the same category of works "Liu Laogen" and "Country Love" have deep user soil on Youku. But to let the show spread outside the station is another matter.
Fortunately, with good quality, the two dramas began to spread to a certain extent both inside and outside the station. From the perspective of word of mouth, the current Douban score of the two dramas has reached 7.7 points; the score of "Ligong" once broke 8, perhaps because many viewers originally wanted to see the mystery of the finale, but found that the sequel was revealed, so they lowered the score.
The broadcast curves of both dramas show the impact of word-of-mouth communication. Judging from the market share data of Lighthouse, Yunhe and other lists, "Daming" reached a market share of 14%+ three days after its launch, and then basically stabilized at 9%-10% until the end; The market share of the naked broadcast "Ligong" on the first day was only 0.64%, and the subsequent market share continued to be stable at 1%, and it did not decline after the end.
The broadcast effect may not be as surprising as possible, but first, it has shown that the market can see and spontaneously spread some waist and tail works, which is the basic element of the birth of dark horse dramas; Secondly, the two dramas also show more communication potential with word-of-mouth fermentation, and from the current high-spread segments, it is not difficult to find the points where the two dramas really drive the user's emotions.
For example, in the later period of "Daming", many officials took out their hearts and lungs to break the officialdom and society of that year, "What will I take to pay back?" I only have this conscience and this face", "How can you give him a good future in the house", "Every hurdle is tantamount to reincarnation"; And "Ligong" is based on the charm of comedy + suspense, with the tap effect of "a must-see for Northeasterners".
It should also be noted that "Daming" and "Ligong" are both attempts to make high-quality short dramas on the platform, so they pay more attention to the artistic value of the content, and the degree of quality at the production level is extremely high. Although there are still their own shortcomings, such as the narrative structure of "Daming" is too literary, and there is a lack of tension in the early stage; The comedy of "Meritorious Service" weakens the suspense; But the overall temperament is indeed easier to drive word-of-mouth fermentation.
But at least for now, really good content is paid attention to and spread in the market, and this benign ecology may promote the "dark horse drama" may gain a rising trend this year. After the industry "white horse drama" soaring since 2022, such an environment may become a new wave of benefits for the industry in 2023.
The platform needs "white horse drama"
The industry needs "dark horse drama"
Combined with the above, it should be seen that the reason why the platform seeks more "white horse dramas" is that this type of content is more certain and more predictable, and this part of the content is basically classified into the platform's self-made, which is also a strategy to transform content certainty into platform certainty.
The high risk of the birth of the "dark horse drama" is no longer borne by the platform.
From the perspective of the large classification of waist and tail dramas, the reason why they are so decisively cut is that behind this type of drama is that in the past industry low-headed output, do not look at the market Under the To B model, there is frequent overproduction, low-quality homogenization is serious, resulting in serious inefficiency, and the consequences of this lack of overall planning are of course unwilling to be borne by the platform.
Coupled with some changes in recent years, it is becoming more and more difficult to produce the so-called "dark horse drama".
First, with the gradual maturity of the market, the threshold for becoming a "dark horse" is getting higher and higher. In 2015, the "Crown Princess Promotion" of the "Qi" service Dao can still be blacked to the end; But in the past two years, these so-called "dark horses" are actually remarkable in the plot, performance, and service, such as the costume drama "Imperial Gift" has been praised as "aesthetic online".
Second, as the platform's participation in the production side becomes higher and higher, good stories usually get better resource blessings, and there are fewer and fewer stories in the industry that "have no money to produce" but rely on good scripts to turn over against the wind, and there will be cases of "Ignite Me, Warm You" relying on excellent content to upgrade the platform's internal rating from S to S+.
Fortunately, some changes in the past two years may make this year an opportunity for the "dark horse" to run.
The first is the improvement of the entire market, and the popularity and dissemination of the iteration of domestic dramas in 2022 have reached a peak in recent years. Such a market temperature can not only benefit the platform and head dramas, but also the audience who have formed consumption habits will begin to pay for the more segmented and personalized "small and beautiful".
The second is the favorable platform policy. At present, the so-called "Big Six" of the established drama companies and the companies that have become the top of the industry in recent years and have a strong binding relationship with the platform, such as White Film and Television, Straw Bear, Stellar Gravity, etc., will mainly undertake the platform's self-made and customized business; The development of non-head dramas will be handed over to companies and practitioners in the waist and tail of the industry in the mode of sub-accounting dramas.
Under this layered structure, the mechanism of emerging "dark horse drama" has become the basic logic of the sub-account drama mode that can run smoothly, and it is also the rising channel of the power of the waist and tail. At this level, the industry needs a "dark horse drama".
As mentioned earlier, the threshold for creating a "dark horse drama" is getting higher and higher.
In terms of several dramas with higher accounts last year, "Twinkle and Twinkle Star" with a share of more than 100 million and "My Name is Zhao Jiadi" with a record of 76 million, the former is produced by the film company Free Cool Whale, the latter has a big god web novel IP base, in fact, it is still the road of "high investment and high return", and the gameplay is not matched by most of the billing dramas.
However, from a positive point of view, under the premise that the platform further amplifies its dominant position, the account-sharing drama market is unlikely to go to the old road of bad money driving out good money in the future, and content creators who truly love and have ability still have the opportunity to grow under this mechanism.
The future drama market norm should be the parallel state of "white horse" and "dark horse", such as compared with summer vacation, New Year and other popular schedules, off-season such as spring and autumn can leave some opportunities for "dark horses" and achieve a benign development ecology in the industry. It remains to be seen whether it is possible to run a dark horse with circle-breaking significance this spring.