#Flowers##繁花大结局#
Text | Wang Yuchan
Edit | Qiao Qian
At the beginning of "Hurricane" and the end of "Flowers", the long video industry has finally spent a year of "thrilling and no danger".
On the evening of January 9, the finale of "Flowers" was officially broadcast, and it scored a high score of 8.3 on Douban. According to the data of Lighthouse Professional Edition, "Flowers" topped the TV drama list for 2 consecutive weeks, with a market share of 26.14% that week. At the same time, the popularity value of the show on Tencent Video exceeded 31,000, becoming the fourth TV series with a popularity value of more than 30,000 on Tencent Video in 2023 (the other 3 are the period drama "The Sea in the Dream", the ancient puppet drama "Sauvignon Blanc" and the urban drama "Good Things Come in Pairs").
"Flowers" has also created a unique cultural phenomenon off screen: Shanghai's Yellow River Road, where the story was prototyped, was overcrowded, the Peace Hotel's "Flowers"-themed customized meal for two priced at 1,702 yuan was sold out, the daily sales of pork ribs and rice cakes hit a record high, and the directorial Wong Kar-wai's themed filters have also sparked a parody trend on short video platforms.
The reason why 2023 is said to be a year of "thrills and no dangers" is because where the audience has no intention of paying attention, the long video platform has greatly reduced the number of investment projects, making high-cost dramas like "Flowers" bear the fate of "must not lose".
According to the data of Lighthouse Professional Edition, the number of valid dramas in the online drama market in 2023 will be 294, a decrease of 10.6% from 2022. This is the result of long video platforms "reducing costs and increasing efficiency", reducing investment, and putting "striving for profits" before "grabbing shares".
However, the number of episodes has decreased, and the audience has loved watching it more. According to the Beacon Professional Edition, in 2023, the total playback index of large-market feature films will be 38.612 million, an increase of 7.7% against the trend. This proves that cutting out those dispensable low-quality dramas is the right choice, and the idea of "a small number of high-quality dramas" works.
Compared with the extravagance and waste in the past, relaxing quality control, and engaging in large-scale investment projects, it is really better to "use good steel on the blade".
"Flowers" piled up with real gold is a fate that must not be lost
Although the specific figure of the cost of "Flowers" has not been officially stamped by itself, there is absolutely no objection to calling it a "drama piled up with real gold" - for example, about 10 million yuan was spent on music alone.
In "Flowers", there are many classics of singers such as Jacky Cheung, Faye Wong, Wen Zhaolun, and Chen Baiqiang, and 57 golden songs have been inserted in 30 episodes. Music practitioners estimate that the cost of this part of the copyright alone should be 10 million.
The more expensive projects are also the 1:1 setting of the Yellow River Road, as well as the ultra-luxurious production team: the visual director of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", the art of "The Legend of the Demon Cat" and the cinematography of "The Red Lantern Hangs High", as well as the additional cost of director Wong Kar-wai's "slow work and meticulous work" as always. There are rumors that have not been officially confirmed that the cost of the show is as high as 20 million yuan.
The crew rebuilt the 1:1 Yellow River Road setting
The film and television drama "Flowers" is planned to start preparations in April 2019, start on September 10, 2020, and was originally scheduled to be delivered in April 2021. The original filming cycle was already longer than the average drama - even the popular suspense drama "The Long Season", which is also out of the circle, took less than 4 months to shoot.
Therefore, in 2021, Tencent Video has begun to attract investment for "Flowers". The vertical media "Film and Television Monologue" reported that Li Eryun, the chief producer of "Flowers", said: "The commercial department asked in 2021, can it be broadcast this year? So "Flowers" recruited a round of business, but it was not broadcast. In 2022, I asked again, can it be broadcast this year? It still hasn't been broadcast. If it is not broadcast in 2023, customers will lose confidence. ”
Costs go up with the length of shooting. Filming a TV series at a movie-like scale, "Flowers" is a big gamble — especially for Tencent, which is "reducing costs and increasing efficiency."
The pressure is reflected in the advertising investment, and there are 10 advertisements in the first episode of "Flowers", including the premiere of the show, the review of the previous situation, the opening and ending credits, the middle and creative advertisements, etc. Then, with the increase in popularity, more than 86 seconds of "Meituan Small Theater" was added at the end of the ninth episode, and the number of advertisements in the sixteenth episode increased to 11.
Image source: Douban @ Come and see the moon
According to the statistics of Douban user @ Come to see the month, "Flowers" showed a total of 286 advertisements in 30 episodes, far exceeding last year's advertising king "Three-Body Problem" (168 ads), with an average of 9.53 ads, a total time of 2721S, an average advertising time of 90.7S, and a total of 40 brands. The density of ad placement is unimaginable in other episodes.
A small amount of high-quality products, who wins?
Cutting dispensable low-quality projects and concentrating funds to make big dramas is not the idea of Tencent Video. For Aiyouteng (iQiyi, Youku, Tencent Video), which once burned a total of more than 100 billion yuan in 10 years, but was finally "cut off" by short videos, this is already a consensus.
In 2022, the three video platforms will work together to raise prices, and at the same time, they will also clarify the change of thinking. In April of that year, Tencent Video held an "Early Spring Business Sharing Meeting" the day before announcing the price increase of members, making it clear that it would further "reduce costs and increase efficiency" in content development, rationalize expenditures, optimize content costs, and "curb unreasonable inflated prices in the production chain and squeeze out bubbles." ”
iQIYI founder and CEO Gong Yu also said in the same year that the turning point has arrived. "China's long video industry has entered a new stage, characterized by the pursuit of efficiency, the pursuit of loss reduction, and the ultimate pursuit of profitability, rather than the previous pursuit of market share and rapid growth. ”
After two years of "squeezing the bubble", Tencent Video and iQiyi have turned losses into profits.
In 2022, iQIYI will achieve revenue of 29 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 5%, and 1.3 billion after deducting non-net profit, achieving annual profit for the first time. At the same time, according to a report by LatePost, Tencent Video will also be profitable for the first time in 2022, with an annual revenue of more than 10 billion yuan, and has been profitable since October.
At the same time, just like "Flowers" is to Tencent Video, the significance of a big hit drama to the platform has increased dramatically. At the beginning of 2023, because of a "Hurricane", iQIYI's total revenue in the first quarter increased by 15% year-on-year. Membership service revenue was 5.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 24%. Both total revenue and membership revenue reached all-time records.
Under the new form of competition, everyone is engaged in high-quality products, so whose investment is more effective?
According to the "2023Q3 Drama Quarterly Report" released by Guduo Media, in the third quarter, iQiyi has more than 30 dramas online, which is significantly higher than other platforms, and Tencent Video is comparable to Youku.
However, among the top 20 solo dramas with average popularity, Tencent Video ranked first with 8, followed by iQiyi with 5, Youku with 4, and Mango TV with only 1.
At present, Tencent Video's investment efficiency ranks first, followed by iQiyi, and the top two have distanced themselves from other platforms.
From the perspective of the whole year, in 2021, the effective playback value of Tencent video dramas will be higher than iQiyi, and in 2022, iQiyi will be higher than Tencent Video. This year, it may be time for the two to alternate the top spot.
In 2023, I believe that long video platforms will know more than ever that low-cost short dramas are not suitable for themselves. The creators who mass-produce vertical screen short dramas on short video platforms have quickly attracted the attention of users in the sinking market. Although high-cost dramas such as "Hurricane" and "Flowers" are "dangerous moves", it now seems that the effectiveness of this path has been fully proven.