Enter the sprint stage of the first half of 2023, when the reality drama battle is underway!
There are only a handful of costume dramas and realistic dramas are constantly emerging, building a new pattern of the June drama market, which also carries new innovative trends and industry signals.
Text | Little Dong Dong
In June, the major platforms entered the sprint stage of the first half in the content layout, and they all showed full sincerity in arranging broadcasts, and the field of dramas also showed distinctive characteristics -
On the one hand, fairy tale dramas have become the core support for the basic plate of costume dramas.
In the past, there were ancient puppet fairy dramas "Long Moon Ember Ming", "Starfall Condensed into Sugar" and "Heavy Purple" and other pearls in front, and because the earlier scheduled "Years of Green Lotus" and "Ning'an Like a Dream" were finally not broadcast due to "technical problems", Youku's "Heart Protection" and iQiyi's "Hua Rong" have become the face of the current costume drama field.
On the other hand, the long-established reality dramas are in a situation of dominating the screen.
After a little inventory, major platforms have launched the realistic TV series "Houlang", the contemporary urban drama "Mature Year", the medical workplace drama "White Castle", the urban light and sweet wild drama "Sanfenye", the urban emotional drama "The New World of the Wife", the intangible cultural heritage urban drama "Just Meet You", the procuratorial drama "Public Prosecution", the youth inspirational emotional drama "The Sea in the Dream", the contemporary urban drama "Illuminate You", etc., and subsequent dramas such as "My Human Fireworks" will meet users.
According to the latest data of the Bone Duo Popularity Index ranking, Tencent Video's "The Sea of Dreams" topped the list, followed by dramas such as "Public Prosecution", "Back Wave" and "Three Points". Although the current performance of "The Sea of Dreams" is superb, other modern dramas have also entered a state of battle.
The popularity of the drama is closely related to the results of the network of the network. Looking at the video platform first, in the Lighthouse Professional Edition full-network feature film broadcast market share ranking, Youku's "Back Wave" topped the list, and Tencent Video's "The Sea in the Dream", "Wife's New World" and "Sanfenye" were shortlisted in the top five; On the traditional media side, "White Castle", "Houlang" and "Public Prosecution", which were shortlisted for the top 5 ratings, not only have to compete with the dramas simulcast by the same network, but also compete with "Ordinary Road" and "Warm and Sweet" that have ended on the network side.
There are only a handful of costume dramas and realistic dramas are constantly emerging, building a new pattern of the June drama market, which also carries new innovative trends and industry signals.
1
Classic and innovative
Unleash new content trends
Looking at the dozen or so reality-themed dramas currently on the air, from the main story to the characters, they have their own merits, which also reflect the innovative trend of such dramas.
Break out of the creative inertia of hutong drama and innovate the opening method of Peking opera.
When it comes to Peking opera, I always think of hutong dramas such as "Love Man Courtyard", "Sesame Hutong" and "Hutong", this time "The Sea in the Dream" breaks the theme with a group of disciples in the big courtyard, telling the story of their dreams under the wave of reform and opening up, writing the story of the ups and downs of different fates, which not only describes the humanistic style of Sijiu City in the 70s, but also expands the perspective and value landing point of Peking opera. Since its broadcast, "The Sea of Dreams" has exceeded 24,000 in popularity on Tencent Video Station, and the ratings of Kuyun, Maoyan Heat, Lighthouse Heat, and Detawen Prosperity Index have all topped the national championship, which is quite a quasi-explosive character.
New wine in old bottles, revisiting midlife crises and marriage crises.
Let's first look at the topic of "mid-life crisis", the earlier online "Zhang Weiguo's Summer", "I Am Yu Huanshui" and "If the Years Can Go Back" are all from a male perspective to tell the plight of middle-aged people, "Mature Year" presents the internal and external crises faced by mature women from the perspective of Zhang Chunmei, and the different gender perspectives extract different social issues, and also bring new thinking and resonance to the public.
Looking at the topic of "marriage crisis", from "The Temptation to Go Home" to "Thirty Only" to "Wife's Choice", all of them take the husband's cheating and the wife's awakening as the main story line, it can be said that the classic story structure is always tried and tested.
This time, "Wife's New World" follows the same logic, staging the growth story of full-time mother Shen An'an returning to the workplace to become a female anchor after being betrayed by her husband and divorced. The "unconventional" bloody marriage and the workplace story that keeps pace with the times have made "Wife's New World" accurately poke at the high point of users' drama watching, not only in the popularity value of Tencent Video Station exceeded 2400, but also ranked in the TOP1 in the Tencent Video List, Tencent Video TV Drama List, Douyin Entertainment List, Maoyan Real-time Popularity, Kuaishou Entertainment List, and Toutiao Entertainment List in the first week of broadcasting.
Innovate the role of the protagonist and subdivide more professional dramas.
From "Public Prosecution" which focuses on the profession of prosecutor to "Three Divided Fields" where both male and female protagonists are engaged in navigation research and development, from "White Castle" with emergency department doctors as the core to "Illuminate You" and "My Human Fireworks" which both focus on Chinese fire protection, the protagonists are all engaged in a certain vertical profession, and a large number of professional professional knowledge and workplace stories are output in the play, allowing the public to immerse themselves in the daily work behind each profession, and deeply perceive the sense of mission behind the profession through the stories of the male and female protagonists. It provides a vehicle for the output of mainstream values.
Selected Chinese traditional cultural tracks, with ingenuity inheritance to infiltrate people's hearts.
Taking TCM culture as the starting point, "Houlang" revolves around the proposition of cultivating TCM inheritors, so that the dual topics of TCM cultural inheritance and youth TCM growth can be implemented; Taking intangible cultural heritage as the incision, "Just Meeting You" comprehensively records the production process of a popular intangible cultural heritage program, plus the innovative expression blessing of unit dramas and play-within-a-play, adding a lot of highlights to the overall plot, during which many highlight slices are spread on social platforms.
There are not only conventional elements such as youth struggle and mid-life crisis familiar to the public, but also innovative cuts such as pendant occupations and cultural inheritance, and the recent series of urban dramas are maintaining the classic drama playing style, and are also actively exploring more content tentacles, as far as possible to reflect the content preferences of more audience groups, and further expand the user base.
2
The "quasi-explosive model" has come out
The battle for modern dramas continues
The vast majority of film and television dramas currently on the air and about to be broadcast are adapted from novels. In addition to their existing content, the popularity and word-of-mouth formation of today's dramas are also affected by multiple factors.
The first is the scheduling method.
Nowadays, urging has become the daily life of the majority of users chasing dramas. In the face of users' voices, video platforms sometimes update in advance, such as the popular drama "The Beginning" at the beginning of last year was launched in advance of the finale, this time "The Sea of Dreams" was broadcast on CCTV and Tencent Video on the same day, and used an uninterrupted scheduling method to connect to the finale, plus iQiyi's "Huarong" broadcast at the same time also adopted the method of continuous change, #These two dramas are still strange #This topic appeared on the Weibo hot search list.
In addition, when iQIYI's "The World Is Waiting for You to Break Up" was launched on May 31, it launched all the episodes at once for member users to watch. This constantly changing scheduling method can allow users to maintain continuity in their enthusiasm for chasing dramas, and can also speed up the fermentation and iteration of episode topics, so that the dramas can remain fresh on and off the site.
The second is the cast.
A series of realistic themes compete on the same screen, and the popularity and praise of the main actors have become an important factor influencing the reputation and popularity of the series. In addition to dramas such as "Mature Year" and "Wife's New World" who choose mature actors due to the needs of the characters, most of the dramas are played by young actors with high attention - Yang Yang, one of the "four major flows of the original generation", Xiao Zhan, who became the new top stream because of "Chen Qingling", Li Qin, who has masterpieces such as "Dream of Red Mansions", "White Deer Plain", "Ruyi", "Chu Qiaochuan" and "Qing Yu Nian", and Zhao Lusi, who became a representative flower of the post-95 generation because of works such as "The Rumored Chen Qianqian" and "Star Han Splendid", are among them.
In addition to the attraction of the drama itself, actors are the core driving force for the majority of users to watch the drama, and they are also the drainage responsibility for the promotion of the series.
For example, when "The Sea in the Dream" premiered, the role of Xiao Chunsheng played by Xiao Zhan topped the V list role index by breaking 9, #The sea in Xiao Zhan's dream # had 26.396 million discussions and 17.98 billion views, while the official topic of the series #The Sea in the Dream #7.781 million discussions 1.94 billion reads, the difference between the two is very star.
Taking "Back Wave" as an example, #Luo Yizhou Houlang # has 80.899 million discussions and 5.55 billion views, while the official topic #TV series Houlang# has 18.755 million discussions and 1.55 billion views, and there is also a big gap between the two.
For the fan group, the topic of actors and series linkage is more attractive, making actors become the traffic password for the series to be promoted on social platforms. It remains to be seen how the subsequent major crews will fancy release the publicity value of the actors.
It is necessary to strengthen the stickiness and loyalty of users in the best scheduling method, and also give full play to the star effect of the core actors to cooperate with the publicity of the series, which also adds a new outlet to the battle of the current popular series of reality dramas.
3
Realistic dramas build a new pattern
User portraits quietly iterate
With the launch of this series of dramas, the user portraits of realistic dramas have quietly changed.
On the one hand, adult users after 00 have grown into half of the basic market of modern drama audiences.
According to the number of Yien Entertainment, the proportion of users aged 18-24 in "Wife's New World", "Houlang", "Illuminate You", "Sanfenye" and "Just Meeting You" has exceeded half, respectively, 61.59%, 52.93%, 52.13%, 51.54%, 50.42%, plus a certain proportion of users aged 0-17, it can be seen that the post-00s have become the core audience of recently launched dramas, and user iterations inject new connotations into young people.
On the other hand, the proportion of female users continues to rise.
According to the number of Yien Entertainment, the previous popular dramas "Thirty Only" and "Ode to Joy 1" accounted for 64.81% and 76.59% of female users respectively. The recently launched dramas such as "The Sea of Dreams", "Back Wave", "Three Divided Wilds" and "White Castle" account for more than eighty percent of female users. The continuous growth of the proportion of female users means that the current series accurately pokes at the content needs of the core user group and has developed a high degree of loyalty to the series. Coupled with the strong purchasing power of female user groups, the series has a broader imagination in commercial cooperation.
Under the general trend of youthfulness and femininity, there are also special episode samples, which also release different signals.
Or the national drama that is loved by all ages, except for the 18-24 years old accounting for 35.41% of the highest, the audience distribution of other age segments of "The Sea of Dreams" is relatively balanced. Reading Entertainment Jun believes that "The Sea of Dreams" can attract mature audiences at the same time while taking advantage of the theme of the situation, and on the other hand, benefiting from the star effect, Xiao Zhan, who is widely loved by young people, and Li Qin, who is highly national, play the male and female protagonists, which can attract the younger generation of audiences to follow the drama, and thus achieve a family-friendly viewing picture.
Or develop a new blue ocean of male-oriented dramas. "Mature Year" has individual characteristics in terms of the ratio of male and female users and the distribution of age groups. According to the number of Yien Entertainment, male users account for 71.12% and female users account for 28.88%, and the core users are mainly young mature audiences, and 60.6% of the audience aged 25-39, which is very attractive to middle-aged reserves and quasi-middle-aged users.
Behind the changes in user portraits, it not only benefits from the accurate incubation of series episodes, but also closely related to the general environment of the entire drama market. Affected by objective factors, the current costume drama market is relatively lonely, so that reality dramas gain more market advantages and gain more innovation space and opportunities to get out of the circle.
However, it is worth noting that the summer file is the outbreak period of costume dramas, "Yanxi Raiders", "Menghualu" and "Star Han Splendid" are typical representatives, plus costume fantasy dramas "Jade Bone Yao" and "Sauvignon Blanc", costume sadomasochistic TV series "Anle Chuan", costume fairy drama "With Fengxing", costume martial arts suspense drama "Lotus Tower", thriller strange romance drama "Carefree Du" and costume drama "Changfeng Du" and "Fox Demon Little Red Lady" and other dramas to be broadcast. It is foreseeable that when the summer season comes, the drama market may be a new look.