In the first half of 2024, the drama market will not only have a good reputation with high artistic standards, but also dark horses that have found a new way, and there will be national hits that "hard control" the audience of the whole network with hardcore content...... The overwhelmed number of masterpieces appeared frequently, handing over a gratifying report card for the first half of this year's drama market.
In recent years, the trend of "quality increase and quantity reduction" in the drama market has become more and more significant, and the surprise performance of the drama market in the first half of this year is an inevitable process under this trend.
The total number of market observation dramas has further shrunk, and the number of high-quality dramas has reached a new high
The following figure shows the comparison of the data of new episodes on H1 video websites in the past three years, and it can be intuitively seen that the number of long videos is decreasing year by year. Shangxing dramas fell significantly in the same period last year, and this year continued to decline on the basis of last year. The contraction in the number of online dramas was even more pronounced in the first half of this year, with a decline of 36%.
While the total number of dramas has shrunk sharply, the number of popular dramas with a webcast index of 80+ has increased year by year, and in the first half of this year, 32 dramas have reached the level of 80+ popularity, which is the best result in the same period in the past three years. Looking back at the overall performance of the drama market in recent years, the trend of "quality increase and quantity reduction" has always been obvious, and the data performance in the first half of this year once again verified this trend.
The total number of dramas continues to decrease, and there are more and more high-quality dramas, and under the development thinking of "concentrating high-quality resources to create high-quality dramas" of long video, the quality rate of domestic dramas is increasing rapidly. The process of improving the quality and reducing the quantity of domestic dramas is still continuing, and the market trend of "quality improvement and quantity reduction" will be more significant in the future.
The number of 90+ episodes in the series review far exceeded the total number of last year, and "phenomenal" works were born in many tracks
When the Internet shortens the distance between users and content, the market feedback of works has a clearer and more intuitive indicator. Under the benign and transparent market competition mechanism, those high-quality works that can obtain high attention and high satisfaction from the audience undoubtedly represent the latest aesthetic and market trends in the drama market.
We reviewed the top 30 dramas in the webcast index in the first half of this year, as shown in the figure below, the most popular dramas are "Celebrating More Than Years Season 2" and "Walking with the Phoenix". Including these two works, a total of 4 works in the first half of this year have a webcast index of 90+ magnitude, compared with the standard of only 2 90+ dramas in the whole year of 2023, the drama market in the first half of this year can be described as "fruitful".
From the perspective of platform distribution, the largest number of these popular dramas is Tencent Video, with 12 major dramas, followed by iQiyi and Youku, with 10 and 7 respectively.
The above-mentioned high-profile dramas have diverse themes and large differences in style, which meet the personalized viewing needs of users with different attributes in different tracks. In the costume dramas, urban dramas and suspense dramas tracks where popular dramas are concentrated, there were "circle-breaking works" in the first half of this year, which is particularly noteworthy.
In the first half of this year, the costume drama track has achieved remarkable results. The figure below shows the top 10 in the 2024 H1 costume drama webcast index, and the webcast index is all at 80+. The popularity of the two works "Celebrating More Than Years Season 2" and "Walking with the Phoenix" exceeded 90+, and the influence broke through the circle, attracting the attention of the whole network. In the field of costume dramas with rapid iteration of aesthetics, these two works have won market recognition with enough hardcore content.
Urban dramas also delivered a brilliant report card in the first half of this year, and dramas such as "The Story of Rose" and "Chenghuan Ji", which focus on women's growth, are very popular with the audience. The works on the list also have a webcast index of 80+, and "Flowers" has become a phenomenal masterpiece in the drama market in recent years with 90+ popularity and amazing story style. The dramas represented by "Flowers" and "The Story of Rose" not only present a very high artistic standard in terms of content, but also have a comprehensive influence of their works at the national level, which has aroused a lot of social discussions online and offline.
In the highly genre suspense drama track, there were also surprises in the first half of this year, with 5 works reaching 80+ levels of popularity. Among them, "Ice Hunting", which has a webcast index of 88.75, quickly broke through the circle as a dark horse and became a major variable in this year's drama market.
In the first half of this year, in terms of coverage of high-reputation dramas, Tencent Video and iQiyi have obvious advantages, both 9, while Youku and Mango TV have 7 and 4 respectively.
Comparing word-of-mouth and popularity, the works represented by "Flowers" and "The Years of the Great River" have reached excellent results in both word-of-mouth and popularity, and have achieved a win-win situation in terms of commercial value and artistic level. and "Celebrating More Than Years Season 2", "Walking with the Phoenix", "The Story of Rose" and other ultra-high-impact dramas, their word-of-mouth feedback has also performed well. The reputation from the audience is also one of the important reasons why these works can expand their influence to the whole network.
The industry's thinking about "long-term development" has worked, and high-quality dramas have ushered in fertile soil for growth
It is no accident that high-quality dramas are blooming and the drama market is bumper in the drama market. Combined with the data performance and content of these high-quality dramas, tracing all the links of these high-quality dramas from production, scheduling to publicity, we may be able to gain insight into what kind of "fusion" is taking place in the drama market.
Judging from the scheduling rules of these high-quality dramas, big dramas appeared almost continuously in the first half of this year. "Flowers" at the beginning of the year, "Walking with the Phoenix" in the first quarter, "Chenghuan Ji" in the second quarter, "Celebrating the Second Season of More Than Years" and "The Story of Roses" in the second quarter, etc. On the one hand, it shows that the ability of the video platform to develop and operate large dramas has increased, and it can continue to deliver high-quality high-quality dramas to the market, and it is becoming more and more mature in the operation, publicity and distribution of high-quality dramas.
On the other hand, it also proves that the ceiling of the commercial value of high-quality dramas is constantly being broken, and the hardcore dramas with enough content quality can support the popularity in any schedule, without having to appear in the summer or new year.
From the perspective of production mode, in the first half of this year, the dramas represented by "Flowers" and "Celebrating More Than Years Season 2" used the national market influence to prove that the model of developing big dramas with long-term thinking is also effective in the domestic drama market.
At present, the mainstream market has a relatively fixed production cycle for drama development, but whether it is this year's "Flowers" or last year's "Three-Body Problem", if there is no "long-termism" forward-looking and courageous, it is difficult to cultivate this kind of work with super high artistic value and leading role in the industry if it is only pursuing rapid commercial returns.
Although under the current production and broadcasting system, it is difficult for "Flowers" and "Three-Body Problem" to be copied in large quantities, the original intention of "sharpening a sword in ten years" to polish the original intention of the works is very important. Fortunately, in the upstream of drama production, video platforms are patiently supporting and cultivating good content with long-term development, so that the current domestic drama market can bring forth the new, always maintain innovation vitality, and continue to climb the peak of art.
Long-term thinking has also ushered in a new chapter in the development of IP series, and "Celebrating More Than Years Season 2" is the best case. The development of IP series in China has gone through a lot of exploration and trial and error, until the development of the "Ghost Blowing the Lantern" series, Tencent Video gradually explored the way to develop IP with a fixed team. By the time of the IP development of "Celebrating More Than Years", this model was becoming more and more mature and verified in the market. It is expected that long-term IP development may become the mainstream mode of IP series development in the future.
In the first half of this year, the quality and market feedback of high-quality dramas have also made the standards of high-quality dramas more and more "diversified". Judging from the data, these high-quality dramas have both popularity and word of mouth, and with the blessing of the audience's reputation, the speed of breaking the circle and social influence of the works have increased significantly, such as "The Story of Rose" and "Spring Sending Lover" After the hit, the lines and golden sentences in the play were widely disseminated, triggering active interaction between cultural tourism and tourism in various places.
In terms of content, the innovation and quality of these high-quality dramas go hand in hand, such as "Flowers", which is unique in terms of story style and character group portraits, and every frame of the picture is meticulously crafted, making the audience unforgettable; There is also "Walking with the Phoenix", which makes bold innovations in character design and emotional relationships, and its texture also makes the audience feel the sincerity of the production.
In the past few years, IP development has caused aesthetic fatigue among the audience, precisely because the market is too dependent on the "methodology" of the so-called popular elements. Nowadays, the success rate of works that simply copy popular works is decreasing, and innovative category dramas are winning back the trust of the audience.
In the first half of this year, excellent works in the drama market were frequently released, and a hundred flowers bloomed and achieved remarkable results. Behind the birth of these high-quality, high-artistic high-quality dramas is the inevitable result of the industry's reshaping of content standards, reform of the production system, and updating of production thinking in recent years. Looking forward to the second half of 2024, the drama market will produce more high-quality works and bring more surprises to the audience.