The author | Xiaoman
Edited | Jiang Yue
WeChat public account: Chief Character View (ID: sxrenwuguan)
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="7" >01 Fog</h1>
Wang Xiaoshuai and Hua Zhen served as the general directors, Duan Yihong and Hao Lei starred, and iQiyi's "Misty Theater" has just finished "Octagonal Pavilion Mist", which was once pinned on high hopes.
The first draft of its script was completed in 2017.
The inspiration for the whole play is an idea of director Wang Xiaoshuai: "A case that has not been solved for many years has a profound impact on the family." ”
Along this line of thought, screenwriter Yang Yishu began to construct complex character relationships. Yang Yishu is Wang Xiaoshuai's long-time partner, and She is the screenwriter of Wang Xiaoshuai's 2010 film "Rizhao Chongqing".
Many details were mentioned in the release of "The Mist of the Octagonal Pavilion", for example, Yang Yishu and Wang Xiaoshuai constantly discussed the six drafts, and also absorbed the ideas of many young screenwriters during the period. After the script writing was basically mature, the team began to look for a broadcast platform.
At the beginning of 2019, Wang Xiaoshuai's film "Long Days on Earth" was not only successfully shortlisted for the main competition unit of the 69th Berlin International Film Festival, but also won the best male and female lead awards.
At this moment, iQiyi threw an olive branch to Wang Xiaoshuai's winter and spring pictures. Liu Xuan, president of Winter Spring Pictures, said:
"Catching up with the epidemic in 2020, I wanted to put this project aside first, but I didn't expect that "The Hidden Corner" was suddenly out of the circle, and iQiyi felt that we were very suitable for putting it in the Mist Theater."
However, Wang Xiaoshuai's team has been involved in the film field for many years and is not familiar with the production of TV series, so iQiyi invited Hua Zhen, who has been shooting TV dramas for a long time, to co-direct, Hua Zhen has directed excellent plays such as "My Brother Is Called Shunliu" and "The Flying Eagle Who Went Away", in addition, Han Sanping served as the artistic consultant of the play, and Duan Yihong and Hao Lei starred.
No matter from what point of view, this is a basic guarantee of a lower limit, and the upper limit is immeasurable head repertoire.
iQiyi deliberately put "Octagonal Pavilion Mystery Fog" at the top of the new season of Mist Theater, and it is self-evident that it wants to replicate the ambition of last year's "Hidden Corner". This is the second year of the Mist Theater, and iQiyi needs to prove that the success of The Hidden Corner is no accident — after all, in the business world, replicable success is more valuable.
But it turns out that copying, too hard.
Shaking handheld photography and serious water injection of family trivialities have caused "Octagonal Pavilion Mystery Fog" to attract many negative reviews, on Douban, it split with 6.1, and after the finale was broadcast, it slipped to 5.7 points, which is obviously not in the same grade as "The Hidden Corner" with 8.8 points.
The fog also hung over Gong Yu and iQiyi.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="191" >02 engine</h1>
Gong Yu, a Tsinghua graduate, is a smart man.
In the industry dilemma of long video, he is always one of the first to smell opportunities and try to explore, self-made dramas and members, iQiyi is the first to do.
This is the characteristic of smart people, Tsinghua is especially rich in decent smart people, many of them, laid the foundation for entrepreneurship in the classical Internet era. But many times, smart people are difficult to defeat luck. For example, the eternal problem of the long video: when to make a profit, Gong Yu will give a vague schedule at the earliest, and then avoid other things.
The competition in this industry has also added some bitter love drama. Under the premise of not seeing the hope of profitability, it has been painstakingly insisted on for more than ten years, which is a true feeling and a true love.
Although the number of public appearances is not frequent, Gong Yu is always trying to convey confidence. After the launch of "Octagonal Pavilion Mystery Fog", he said at the iQIYI iJOY Enjoyment Conference:
"The title of my talk today is 'The Simpler the Better', because we now need a simple way of thinking, a simple environment, to make us less anxious."
"After this summer, various news has deeply affected the creation and broadcast of film and drama comics. There are also concerns or concerns in the industry: Is it harder? Smaller creative space? I think the creative difficulty is certain... We firmly believe that although the industry is difficult, it is temporary and the market is changing, but this change may bring more space. ”
However, for the 11-year-old iQiyi, the troubles of the "honmei year" came a little early, and both money-making engines were turned off this year.
One is an idol talent show. Affected by the "milk pouring incident" of star-chasing fans in May, iQiyi's ace variety show "Youth with You" was suspended. At first, Gong Yu's attitude was quite optimistic, mentioning at the first quarter earnings meeting:
"Regarding the variety show 'Youth with You', we are very sorry that the last final was not broadcast... The future talent show can only be free if the vote, the impact on advertising revenue is still being evaluated, but we initially look at the impact of this advertising revenue, but it will not be very large. ”
In hindsight, this was an overly optimistic judgment.
In September, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television officially issued a notice to explicitly ban idol cultivation programs, targeting iQiyi's "Youth with You" and Tencent Video's "Creation Camp". This means that the good days of video sites relying on star-chasing fans to obtain traffic and revenue are over.
Another engine that stalls is ahead of schedule.
Starting with Tencent Video's "Chen Qing Ling" in 2019, video websites have developed new ways to play for a fee, and when popular episodes are broadcast, members can spend extra money to watch a few more episodes. The Beijing News quoted information at the celebration banquet of "Chen Qingling" as saying that the number of paid on-demand broadcasts of the show was 5.2 million, with a total amount of 156 million yuan.
That year, 5 dramas in the industry opened ahead of the on-demand, and by 2020, this data will suddenly increase to 123 - no need for the platform to publish specific revenues, and the enthusiasm of each family to participate is enough to prove the profits.
It's just that the user experience of ordinary members becomes a victim.
The public opinion storm finally broke out this fall. iQIYI was the first to take action, announcing in October that it would officially cancel the advanced voq of episodes and cancel the content promotional patches visible to members. Youku and Tencent Video subsequently followed suit, canceling the advanced on-demand. At the moment when the Internet is under strong supervision, serving users also has a new significance.
"Continuously improving the consumer experience and satisfaction of members is the goal of iQIYI's long-term efforts, even if short-term revenue is damaged." On the day the news was announced, Gong Yu said on Weibo.
Smart people know the art of compromise. Someone found out what he had said a year ago. At that time, iQiyi was controversial because of its advanced reviews, and he firmly stated: "At present, it is only trying on a few dramas, the model is very successful, and the future will become a norm and make the scale bigger." ”
The feedback from the capital market has made Gong Yu feel the temperature difference caused by the engine shutdown. On the night of the cancellation of the advance on-demand, iQiyi's U.S. stock fell nearly 5% intraday, with a stock price of $7.36 and a total market value of $5.8 billion.
Of course, such changes, placed in the overall context of 2021, are not prominent. This year, iQiyi's stock price fell all the way after reaching $28.97, and now it has fallen by more than 74%, and the market value has evaporated by $17 billion - according to current data, the equivalent of 1.5 microblogs.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="196" >03 Pending case</h1>
The topic of "profitability" is like a solid fog, so far, except for Mango TV, no video website has successfully stepped out of it.
The public account "LatePost" once interviewed dozens of practitioners to get information: this decade-long long video war has swallowed up more than 100 billion yuan of funds.
It's a tough one that none of the entrants imagined at the time. In the early years, Gong Yu would also euphemistically predict the profitability of iQiyi, and by 2017, he had completely abandoned this conjecture.
The plight of video companies is well known. In addition to the unsolvable "profit" suspense case, they also have to face the impact from short videos. Chen Xiao, senior vice president of iQIYI, publicly mentioned this year that "we have been having a lot of difficulties lately." Friends often ask him, "Is it impossible for you to make long videos?" Is the value getting lower and lower? ”
Gong Yu, who has always shown himself as Dr. Ruya, also poured bitter water in public.
At the 9th China Network Audiovisual Conference, which contributed to the hot topic of "short video is pig food", Gong Yu talked about the pain caused by the secondary creation of short videos:
"The value of a 90-minute football game is concentrated in more than a minute, and if the whole network is full of videos of football shots, then who would buy a 90-minute football game?"
Capital markets also seem to have a hard time finding confidence in the long-form video business. According to Bloomberg, iQiyi plans to go public for the second time in Hong Kong as soon as the end of this year and is expected to raise at least $500 million — far less than the $2.25 billion it raised when it landed on the NASDAQ.
Behind the shrinkage of fundraising is iQiyi's 11-year loss.
According to iQIYI's pre-U.S. prospectus, since 2015, iQIYI has lost 2.575 billion, 3.074 billion and 3.736 billion yuan per year. Post-listing losses were even more severe, from 2018 to 2020, 9.1 billion yuan, 9.3 billion yuan and 6 billion yuan, respectively.
Gong Yu was not unimpressed.
Reuters reported in May that Gong Yu had envisioned using AI and 5G technology to cover the video production line to cut costs and achieve profitability in the next five years. In addition, Gong Yu also disclosed this year that iQiyi has set up more than 50 original content studios internally to increase the proportion of original content and optimize the content cost structure.
In addition to structural adjustments, creating ace programs with strong gold absorption ability was once the top priority of iQiyi.
"Youth with You" has confirmed the feasibility of "one fish and more eating": fans bring income from investment; love beans that come out of the draft, platform participation is divided; in addition, there is also the income brought by traditional advertising implants. According to iResearch data, the talent shows represented by "Youth with You" and "Creation Camp" are the most expensive variety shows in the past 3 years.
But now it seems that this is still not the right way out of the fog.
iQiyi recently released 260 new content projects, such as "Youth with You" such as "S-rated" idol talent shows have disappeared. Gong Yu's latest explanation for this is:
"Works that only consider flow, have no vitality."
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="199" >04 track</h1>
At the age of 19, Gong Yu was admitted to Tsinghua University and became Zhang Chaoyang's disciple, and later both went to the United States to study.
In 1996, Gong Yu returned to China to catch up with the Internet wave, and two years later, Zhang Chaoyang founded Sohu, and Gong Yu also created a comprehensive portal focus network.
A few months later, the dot-com bubble burst.
Gong Yu, who has a keen sense of smell, combined the Internet and real estate with two outlets, changed the focus network to the focus real estate network, quickly built it into the largest vertical website in the real estate industry, and sold it to his brother Zhang Chaoyang in 2003, who also entered Sohu as the chief operating officer.
A year later, Gu Yongjun left Sohu and founded Youku, while Gong Yu's departure was 6 years later than his boss Gu Yongjun. That year, Ku6.com, founded by Li Shanyou, was listed on nasdaq and became the first stock of video listing. Subsequently, Gu Yongjun took Youku to the United States to list, and the stock price soared by 161.25% on the first day of listing, and the market value once surpassed Sina to reach $3.34 billion.
Video websites have become an industry that everyone wants to enter.
Baidu selected Gong Yu in a list of more than 100 people and began to prepare for iQiyi. Gong Yu, who was 41 years old at the time, showed his enthusiasm for entrepreneurship, and he would go downstairs to the company before 8 o'clock every morning, and often still processed work emails at 1 o'clock in the middle of the night.
In 11 years, he became the "night watchman" of the video industry.
The video track that once housed hundreds of players now has only a few head players left. And the reason why they have survived to this day is largely because they have their backs to BAT. The moment they chose their respective camps, it was decided that it would be a protracted battle to burn money. No giant is willing to lose. The more you invest, the more so.
Spending money was once the norm on this track.
When Mango TV was not yet formed, iQiyi spent 200 million yuan to package and purchase the copyright of Hunan Satellite TV's ace variety show "Happy Base Camp", "Where Daddy Goes", "Every Day Upward" and other programs, quickly gathering a large number of users.
Gong Yu once firmly believed in the model of paying to buy copyright. When the brother Zhang Chaoyang carried the banner of fighting piracy, he was the staunchest ally. iQiyi once sued Station B for "infringing on the dispute over the right to disseminate information on the Internet of Works", and Gong Yu himself once criticized The piracy practice of Station B in the TV program "Revelation of Chinese Businessmen".
However, at that time, he probably did not expect that the money burning war around copyright would be crazy in the future.
Gong Yu ushered in his own highlight moment in the spring of 2018. iQiyi landed on nasdaq, and Robin Li and Gong Yu rang the bell on the same stage. Baidu is iQIYI's largest shareholder, accounting for 69.6% of the equity. As the man standing behind Gong Yu, Robin Li deliberately wore a suit with green that day, which was the color of iQiyi.
Gong Yu looked spirited.
"I'm a person who doesn't believe in feng shui, but before doing iQIYI, there was a shareholder who calculated that iQIYI would either win big or have nothing, and now I am more and more convinced that we will be the former."
Gong Yu's optimism is not without reason. Not only is it a big deal to go public, but for iQiyi, 2018 is indeed a good year.
This year, iQIYI's head content such as "Yanxi Raiders", "Idol Trainees" and "China's New Rap" were all very successful, with an annual membership income of 10.6 billion, which was the first time that the paid membership income of China's video industry exceeded the 10 billion mark. The annual number of new members was 36.6 million, setting a new record for the annual net growth of members in the global streaming media industry.
The dawn of the fog dissipating seemed faintly visible.
But it didn't make it as promised.
The growth of membership income has always been unable to neutralize the growth of losses. After peaking in membership growth, in November last year, iQiyi made its first membership price increase in nine years, but the membership size also dropped from 106.9 million in 2019 to 101.7 million, an instant decrease of 5.2 million. And the many changes encountered this year have also increased its unknowns.
In the past two years, rumors about Tencent's negotiation of iQiyi's acquisition have more or less circulated in the anecdote. Although it has been denied by Baidu time and time again, the rise in iQiyi's stock price brought about by each rumor is also sending a subtle signal - investors seem to be less convinced that iQIYI can get out of the predicament with Baidu's support.
In 2012, when iQiyi was just founded, Gong Yu set himself a small goal:
"This is a rich man's game, if you have money, you can play, you don't have money to quit automatically, it doesn't mean anything to do second, in this industry, you can be the boss if you want to do it."
9 years have passed, and these heroic ambitions have finally dissipated in the fog. The lonely Gong Yu, like a night watchman, stubbornly stands on the Great Wall of Despair. And the Iron Throne in King's Landing doesn't know when it will be able to wait for its master.