Drama review in the first half of 2023: who is leading the hot drama market?

Text|Bai Tian

Halfway through 2023, the drama market has picked up significantly.

Looking back on the first half of the year, one year after the long video platform improved its energy and efficiency, the content of the dramas was moving towards the direction of quality, the proportion of mid-waist dramas decreased, and the overall trend was stable and improving.

After the anti-black drama "Crazy" set off a ratings boom in the opening year, the drama market sang all the way, and masterpieces and explosive models in different fields such as "The Three-Body Problem", "Who Is He", "Long Moon Ember" and "Long Season" have emerged successively.

Anti-black dramas "crazy", sci-fi dramas to open mountains, fairy tale dramas to advance, suspense dramas to break the circle, comic dramas to break through, creators and platforms to explore the content track and content form diversification, driving the industry to rejuvenate new opportunities. Bone Duo extracted the data performance of the drama market in the first half of 2023, and reviewed the drama market through multiple dimensions such as quantity, theme, and popularity. From this, we can also glimpse some new trends in the current Chinese film and television drama market.

Youku drama series number one in unique broadcasts,

The popularity of the top 5 occupies two seats

According to the statistics of bone data, as of June 29, 2023, a total of 150 dramas have been launched on various video platforms, a slight decrease from 155 in the first half of 2022, and the fluctuation is not large. Among them, the number of unique dramas is 41 on Youku, 39 on iQiyi, 22 on Tencent Video, and 3 on Mango TV. The number of Youku solo dramas online has increased significantly, jumping to the first place this year.

Solo dramas are an important weight to highlight the strength of the platform. In the past few years, several major video platforms have fiercely competed in solo dramas, and Youku launched 39 dramas and 27 solo broadcasts in the first half of 2022, with a unique broadcast rate of 69.2%, ranking first among the major long-form video platforms, and its unique broadcast rate further increased to 82% in the first half of this year.

In the first half of 2023, the drama market has seen a large number of popular works since "Crazy". According to the statistics of bone data, the top 5 average popularity in the first half of 2023 are iQiyi's "Crazy", Tencent Video's "The Sea of Dreams", Youku's "Changyue Emberming" and "Who is He", and Mango TV and Migu Video's "Go to a Windy Place". These five works also broke the popularity record on the station, and the popularity performance was very good.

Overall, Youku has performed brilliantly this year, ranking first in the number of unique dramas and occupying two seats in the top 5 in popularity. This actually reveals that the platform's investment in content has been upgraded again, and the strategy of "independent broadcasting of big dramas" continues to deepen. Xie Ying, vice president of Youku, previously said that the budget of Youku dramas this year has not fallen but increased, in addition to deep cultivation of head content, there is also a special share left for innovative content. "Content and themes that can open the ceiling (of platforms and industries), Youku is willing to embrace."

Youku leads the suspense, fairy tale, and puppet tracks

After reading the quantity, let's take a look at the subject matter. Overall, in the first half of the year, the drama market is rich in categories, and several major themes have been outstanding, and Youku is leading in vertical fields such as suspense, fairy tales, and urban puppets.

The suspense drama track in the first half of this year continued the popularity of last year, with a total of 19 suspense-themed dramas online, among which "Who is He", "Long Season" and "Daming's Silk Case under the Microscope" ranked among the top three in bone popularity. The three dramas belong to the three major platforms of Youku, Tencent Video and iQiyi, reflecting the overall prosperity of the suspense theme.

The diversified content supply ensures the continuous and stable output of Youku in the suspense track. In the first half of 2023, nearly half of the suspense dramas came from Youku, the first of all platforms. "Who Is He" follows the criminal investigation documentary suspense style, leading the Central Eight prime-time ratings with a fast pace and strong reversal, and the rebroadcast ranking is also quite good. Not only is the average popularity of bone duo approaching 80, but the average daily popularity during the broadcast period also exceeded 80, ahead of the popular categories such as urban emotions and era in the same period.

Another evergreen track fairy tale drama also gave a new surprise. In the first half of 2023, a total of 5 costume fairy-themed dramas will be launched, namely Youku's "Long Moon Ember Ming", "Starfall into Sugar", "Heart Protection", iQiyi's "Hua Rong", and Tencent Video's "Heavy Purple". The third of the five, Youku's "first label of fairy tale dramas" has obvious advantages.

"Long Moon Ember Ming", which is the most popular in bones, is also superb in terms of the number of Douban scorers, exceeding 320,000. "Starfall Condensed into Sugar" and "Heart Protection", which ranked second and fifth in popularity, are the top two fairy tale dramas with the best reputation in the Douban score in the first half of 2023, and the number of ratings is second only to "Long Moon Ember Ming". They have obvious breakthroughs and innovations in Xian Xia narrative, service Tao, world view architecture, etc., which open up new ideas for the creation of future Xian Xia dramas. 

The youth campus theme also performed well in the first half of the year. In the first half of 2023, a total of 9 youth campus-themed dramas will be launched, 5 Youku solo broadcasts, 3 iQiyi solo broadcasts, and 1 Tencent Video simulcast.

Based on the work of Jinjiang's head author Zhu Ke, "Secretly Can't Hide" ranks first in bone popularity. The number of reservations in the station before the drama was launched was close to 5 million, becoming the top 1 in the number of reservations for Youku puppet themes, and the popularity in the station exceeded 10,000 in 30 hours after it was launched, setting a record for the fastest Youku popularity to break 10,000 puppet dramas.

Another drama adapted from the same author's work "When I Fly to You" followed closely behind, and the popularity on Youku station has approached 9,000, becoming a typical example of small broadness. "When I Was a Boy", which ranked third, is different from campus love, high sugar and high sweetness, focusing on the youthful growth and ignorance of teenagers in the changing times.

"Roll up" with partners

From the platform itself, in 2023, users' requirements for high-quality products and the tilt towards other entertainment methods will make it inevitable that long-form video platforms will continue to innovate at the content level in order to be able to take the lead and seize the minds of users. Xie Ying, vice president of Youku, also mentioned at the Shanghai TV Festival that the drama industry is "rolling" up in two dimensions: aesthetics and ideas.

This requires creators to face themselves squarely and integrate innovative narratives on traditional genres to improve the quality of their works. "Volume" out of quality, "volume" out of style.

On the other hand, major video platforms also need to work more closely with the main creators. The platform continues to improve the cooperation mechanism and give creators full trust, so that the output efficiency of good content can be further improved. Bao Chengzhi, the director of "Who Is He", and Ye Fangcang, the producer of "Long Moon Ember Ming", both mentioned that Youku has given a lot of freedom at the creative level.

Zhang Junbo, the chief producer of "Secretly Can't Hide", once said that his biggest feeling about Youku is resolute and sincere. She revealed that there was actually more than one partner talking about the project at that time, but Youku's understanding of content aesthetics, user sentiment insights and values made her feel very compatible, and Youku's attitude has always been firm and sincere, so the two parties quickly reached a cooperation intention.

Youku has successively released the Young Director Support Program and the "Outstanding Screenwriter Program", aiming to support new forces in the industry and promote the virtuous cycle and development of the industry.

In the first half of 2023, the drama market rose steadily, boosting the morale of the industry. Next, the major video platforms officially entered the second half. In addition to the popular dramas such as "Secretly Can't Hide", "Changfeng Du" and "Snow Eagle Lord", Youku's "Days of Chasing Light" has been the first to be launched yesterday, breaking into the summer file strongly, followed by the highly anticipated costume drama "Anle Chuan", the urban emotional drama "Be Your Own Light", and the live-action comic drama "Under the Stranger" waiting to be broadcast. iQiyi's "Lotus Tower" and "Seven Times of Good Luck", Tencent Video's "Sauvignon Blanc" and "Jade Bone Haruka", Mango TV's "My Human Fireworks" have also entered the summer file list.

The curtain has opened on the summer season, and the key to success or failure is still good content. Just as Youku's phrase "go all out for good content", I hope that the drama market in the second half of the year can go both ways with users and hand over a more brilliant answer.