Traffic Leaving Domestic Drama ｜ Episode 2020
Text | Fu Qiongyin Zhang Jiaqi
Editor | He Runxuan
The drama flow in 2020 is the worst since 2018.
According to Yunhe data, in 2020, the effective broadcast volume of the whole network series was 425.1 billion, down 18% year-on-year, the lowest in three years. The traffic of popular dramas has also been dispersed. In 2020, the effective broadcast of TOP5 traffic accounted for only 17%, a decrease of 5 percentage points compared with 2019.
In the audience’s perception, perhaps the most obvious is the lack of "red man" in the drama series of all ages. In 2017, Secretary Dakang, who has a KPI; In 2018, there was a "Wei Jie" Wei Wei; In 2019, there was a father Su Daqiang.
Who is the "red man" in 2020?
Perhaps only the "green tea" forest can compete with it. However, in terms of the broadcast volume, Lin Youyou is not the same as the previous celebrities: the effective broadcast volume of Yunhe in Nothing But Thirty is only 437,000, and its influence is very limited. At that time, those dramas that featured "Red Man" were broadcast in excess of 10 billion without exception.
The traffic of episodes will be reduced, and the harvesting of attention resources by short videos is a big reason. According to the Research Report on the Development of Network Audiovisual in China in 2020, since December 2019, the single-day usage time of comprehensive video has been declining, while the advantages of short video have been continuously expanding, and it is gradually becoming the underlying application of the Internet.
More comprehensive video content is converted into member content, which also reduces traffic to some extent. Judging from the member content report of Yunhe Data in the first half of the year, nearly 80% of the new dramas in the first half of the year were enjoyed by members. Membership content is increasing and free content is decreasing.
However, in 2020, there is no explosion and no "red man", but the drama industry itself still has some internal changes.
From "Next Stop is Happiness" at the beginning of the year to "last romance" at the end of the year, women are no longer supporting roles in the drama series, but representatives of independence and confidence, and more and more 30+ women have become writing objects; The short drama group debuted, which not only formed the brand effect, but also ran through the business model for the short drama series; The costume dramas that once exploded frequently disappeared from the head list and were replaced by a series of lightly loaded ancient dolls; Advance VOD, which caused an uproar, has become the standard of popular dramas.
The weather vane of the 2021 drama content has also appeared in these changes.
Content moves towards 2C era.
1, the rise of short drama theater.
The drama industry has been calling for short dramas for many years.
In Europe, America, Japan and South Korea, where the drama industry is mature, short dramas broadcast in season are common, which can not only carry innovative and typed expressions, but also adapt to the audience’s fragmented viewing habits. In China, the mode of "TO B" once made the series longer and longer, and it was hard to say that it was innovative in creation.
It was not until 2017 that the increase in membership income made short dramas such as Crime without a license and River God rise strongly. However, due to the impact of big IP, this year, short dramas finally appeared on a large scale.
According to Yunhe data, in 2020, there were 104 short plays with less than 24 episodes, an increase of 7 over last year; In the context of the decline of the series market, short plays effectively played 15.4 billion, up 18% year-on-year. I am Yu Huanshui, Longling Cave, Chen Qianqian in Rumor, detective chinatown and Hidden Corner have all been effectively broadcast over 50 million, while in 2019, only two episodes of "Ghost Blowing Lights, Angry Sunny Xiangxi" and "Warm Hour Light" exceeded 50 million.
The retention rate of short plays broadcast this year is also significantly higher than that of long plays. According to Yunhe data, the effective retention rate of "Hidden Corner" and "I am Yu Huanshui" is nearly 40%, while the effective retention rate of 70 episodes of "New World" and "Qingpingle" is about 13%.
Previously, because of its short length and short broadcast period, short drama series had certain difficulties in attracting investment and benefits. This year, the platform gave an answer by using a number of short drama collections as a theater brand model-Youku launched a suspense theater and broadcasted dramas such as "White Moonlight" with female suspense themes; Iqiyi launched the Fog Theater, with an average score of 8.1 points for five works of Douban.
Among them, Silent Truth and Hidden Corner won the TOP2 and TOP3 of the 2020 domestic online drama word-of-mouth list respectively. In terms of business returns, a total of 68 million members watched it. Starting from the Fog Theater, short dramas have really run through a sustainable business return model.
"We have added the creative context of short plays to the industry and developed a blank area between long dramas and movies. Since then, more works can be developed in this space that is more in line with the creative rules." Ying Dai, vice president of iQiyi and general manager of the self-made drama development center, once told the media.Poisonous eyes (WeChat ID: domoredumou)I also learned that since the Misty Theater, many companies, such as Straw Bear and Little Sugar Man, have started to reserve and develop short drama projects.
2. The costume drama is light and quantitative.
Compared with short plays, this is a year of aphasia in costume dramas.
Judging from the "Top Screen List of Effective Play of 2020 Series on the Whole Network" compiled by Yunhe, the costume drama in the head works has shrunk obviously. Among the TOP20, there are only seven costume dramas, three fewer than in 2019, including two new year’s broadcasts of Joy of Life’s "Under the Golden Clothes" and "Do you know if it should be green, fat, red and thin", which was broadcast in 2018.
In 2019, Poison Eye once mentioned in the annual inventory of drama industry that "Joy of Life can’t change the coldness of costume, and" Little Joy "is the small joy of the industry", aiming to sum up the phenomenon that there were fewer explosions in costume dramas in that year, and the realistic theme drama was on fire, which will continue until 2020.
From the point of view of heat, Nothing But Thirty’s two realistic dramas "Anjia" are ranked 4 th and 6 th respectively in "2020 Full-network Series Effectively Playing the Top Screen List", and they boarded the hot search in Weibo for more than 150 times before broadcasting; Except Joy of Life, which was broadcast at the end of last year, there is no drama in costume drama in 2020 that can cover many ages and form a highly discussed drama.
Costume dramas are also missing in Douban’s high score list. In 2020, there is not a costume drama in the domestic drama with the TOP10 rating of Douban, which is far less impressive than China in the 1990s shown in the surging "Big Rivers 2".
In the face of "The Hidden Corner" and "The Silent Truth", the costume drama also seems a bit suspended.
At the same time, the "long-form giant" costume drama with more than 40 episodes can’t escape the suspicion of water injection, and the costume drama adapted from historical facts is easy to be examined by netizens with a magnifying glass, and it can’t escape the criticism of "historical powder". Qing Ping Le and Da Qin Fu, which were broadcast in 2020, have caused controversy.
Therefore, in 2020, popular costume dramas are almost equivalent to ancient online dramas. In the online drama list of Yunhe Data, "TOP20 Online Drama Played Effectively in 2020", there are 11 ancient puppet dramas with complex elements such as fantasy, light joy and detective stories, and most of them are sweet pet dramas with limited influence, such as Chen Qianqian in Rumor, Datang female forensic and so on.
Chen Qianqian in Rumors
The change in the number of records also reflects the trend that costume dramas are mostly broadcast on online platforms. In 2020, a total of 60 TV dramas with costume themes were put on record, which was slightly lower than 69 in 2019. At the same time, many popular TV dramas with costume themes were transferred to key online TV drama filing channels.
3. Network users are converging.
When TV series is far away from TV, is it far from "disappearing"? This is a question arising from the annual inventory of the drama industry in 2018.
In that year, most of the explosions came from online platforms. Online dramas such as Story of Yanxi Palace and Ruyi’s Royal Love in the Palace only landed on first-line TV stations such as Zhejiang and Jiangsu two months after the closing of online platforms, and the status of video platforms and TV stations was obviously reversed.
This year, this trend is not limited to satellite TV. CCTV, the main station, also cooperates intensively with video websites, and members of video websites enjoy more rights, such as "Who says I can’t get married", "Secret and Great" and other online drama members can watch six episodes first.
The exchange of the relationship between Taiwan and the Internet is essentially the replacement of the financial owners. With the increase in the number of members and the expansion of the influence of self-made dramas, the platform has more advantages in purchasing dramas than satellite TV. The change of the penetration degree of the platform in the industrial chain is also enhancing its right to speak. Now the concept of copyright drama has disappeared from the platform film list, and more head dramas will appear in the form of self-made and customized.
However, the boundaries of the network are becoming more and more blurred, and the users of the network are beginning to merge.
Liu Xiaofeng, chairman of Straw Bear Film Group, told Poison Eye that in the past, there was a judgment that "TV dramas were partial to family fun and online dramas were partial to innovation" in the drama market. But now, with the number of video website members exceeding 100 million, young people have become stock users. In order to increase, the platform should start to attract more sinking and older male users. "Network users are converging."
At the end of November, 2020, "Installing Taiwan" broadcast on CCTV, CCTV and Mango TV is a case in which the platform strives for incremental users. In the past, most of Mango TV’s hot dramas were urban emotional dramas, while "Dressing Taiwan" was the story of a group of men who were engaged in stage dressing in Xi ‘an. The protagonist was nearly 50 years old, and the main audience was obviously not the mainstream audience of Mango TV.
Stills of "Loading Taiwan"
Ren Xu, general manager of Mango TV Copyright Center, once told the media that men account for a higher proportion of new users of "Taiwan Installation", and the overall audience age distribution also extends to mature groups. "This is a very rare wealth for the user group of Mango TV, which effectively enriches the matrix of Mango TV TV drama layout."
4. Female dramas shout slogans, but lack the core.
Although there is a trend of convergence of network users, at present, the mainstream users of video platforms are still young women.
According to the user data of new solo dramas on the four platforms of Yunhe Data in 2020, the average age of users is around 28 years old. Among them, Mango TV and Tencent video solo dramas account for more than 70%, while iQiyi and Youku solo dramas account for about 60%.
This also laid the groundwork for the emergence of a large number of female dramas in 2020. The producer of a female drama told Poison Eye that the platform proposed to reserve a large number of love women’s works as early as 2018, and it was then that several popular female dramas broadcast this year entered the platform planning.
Compared with previous female dramas, this year’s drama series has a certain degree of advancement. If today’s heroine is "standing at 30", the past heroine is "standing at 30". Previously, for the heroine of domestic urban drama who was set as a professional woman, 30 years old was a threshold, which was difficult to cross even if she was set as a professional elite.
And this year, the poisonous eyes were angry with the "Lin You You", and the 30+ female drama turned over? In conclusion, for the heroine of domestic drama in 2020, "30+" seems to be a medal, which means independence, maturity, professional achievement and more ability to choose freely. Marriage is no longer a necessary project, the word "leftover women" has become the object of criticism, and 30+ professional women who focus on their careers have also begun to appear in domestic dramas.
Blame you for being too beautiful
From "Next Stop is Happiness" at the beginning of the year to Nothing But Thirty in the middle of the year, and then to "last romance" at the end of the year, domestic female dramas finally no longer need fake "girlfriends", and they no longer have involution due to problems such as love, affection and work. "Best friend" is no longer a stigmatized word, but a mutually supportive existence. The heroines of domestic dramas began to have independent images in career, family, love and other aspects.
But an independent image does not represent an independent kernel.
Mao Jian, a writer and drama critic, once sharply commented: "Which independent woman in contemporary film and television dramas is not escorted by Emperor Ama." In her view, Nothing But Thirty looks like a contemporary folk court drama. It seems that all three female hosts are independent in personality and economy, but the whole drama is completely controlled by men’s emotional changes, derailment or betrayal. "In essence, the three ladies are no different from those ladies-in-waiting and eunuchs who are angry and strong in court dramas."
The contradiction between the slogan and the plot of female dramas may be to complete the KPI—— of today’s hot search orientation-people are designed to spread the golden sentences of independent women, and the dog blood plot is responsible for the popularity of social topics. And this orientation is even affecting the content creation end.
Li Xiao, a screenwriter, once told Poisonous Eyes that many actors and producers now emphasize the need for golden lines and distinctive labels for characters when reading scripts. Golden sentences, hot searches, and people’s designs are all kidnapping creators. Such putting the cart before the horse is something that practitioners need to be vigilant about.
Multi-drama melee 2020
The lack of explosions in costume dramas, the warming of realistic themes, the reconstruction of women’s topics, and the beginning of short dramas … In the past 2020, we saw many turning points in the drama market. In 2021, new trends are also being born from the turning point.
1. Medical care and e-sports become new writing objects of realistic themes.
According to the incomplete statistics of Poisonous Eyes, there are 179 works to be broadcast on the four platforms in 2021. Among them, the realistic theme accounts for nearly 80%, and it is still the backbone of this year’s drama market.
The trend of realism has been going on for many years. Judging from the works to be broadcast, this year’s realistic drama series may usher in a breakthrough in content: the typology is more obvious, and more new industries are beginning to become writing objects.
Specifically, the medical industry has become a hot creative field, and The Brave Heart of a Great Power, Thank You Doctor and The Great Pediatrician will be released this year. In addition, there are Ideal City, which reflects the current situation of China’s construction industry, You are beautiful when you smile with the background of e-sports industry, Programmers are so cute, which shows the daily life of code farmers, and Dress Up, which tells the history of fashion magazines, and so on, covering all walks of life.
What needs to be vigilant is the "sense of suspension" of such industry dramas. Director Wang Jun once said that in the creation of realistic dramas, only by creating a real atmosphere can the audience be immersive. Especially when many industry dramas are accused of being "ungrounded", the focus of new industries is certainly worth looking forward to, but the quality of dramas is still the only criterion.
In addition to industry dramas, with the popularity of dramas such as Little Joy and In the Name of Family, the number of family dramas has also increased. Why did the poisonous eyes once make the audience "afraid of orthopedics" in "In the Name of Family"? As mentioned in the article, unlike the "warm five-person family" expected by the audience, the drama began to shed the coat of family drama after ten episodes, and the protagonists fell into the love vortex of "triangle relationship" and their word of mouth declined.
Judging from the works to be broadcast in 2021, it is becoming the creative consensus of family drama to bid farewell to the problem of "emotional out of focus" and return to the depiction of family relationship. The Children of the Qiao Family, produced by Noon Sunshine, is adapted from Weixi’s novel of the same name. It spans 30 years of social changes and tells the story of five children of the Qiao family supporting each other. Ning Meng’s "trilogy of education series" will also usher in the final work "Little Shede", which shows all the family members in the background of children’s junior high school.
In addition, as 2021 is the centenary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC), there will be nearly 100 tribute dramas broadcast. Including Our The National SouthWest Associated University, which focuses on young students during the Anti-Japanese War, The Awakeing Age with the May 4th New Culture Movement as the background, and Ideal Shines on China, which reviews the history of the party for a century. It is precisely because of the particularity of the year that the military theme also ushered in a blowout. Many of Kingsman’s works, such as Dear Military Dress, Glory of Special Warfare and We Are Young, are all military themes.
2. Women’s topics remain hot and the perspectives are more diverse.
In the drama market in 2021, the topic of women is still hot.
At the beginning of the year, two dramas with two female leading roles, The Great Girl and last romance, have opened the way, which seems to indicate the trend of female dramas this year: under the appearance of the increase in the number of protagonists, it is the expansion of female perspectives and the more fresh female relations that jump out of stereotypes.
The story of two women’s struggle in the workplace, starring Wu Jinyan and Yin Tao, is the main line. In the play, the two are leaders and subordinates, and they have the feelings of being teachers and friends. Dress-up, which is both a female drama in the workplace, depicts the workplace struggle between the new and old editors of fashion magazines.
Zhu Deyong’s well-known cartoon "Bitter Girl" has been remake again, and like "North Road South" starring Wang Luodan and Lyric, it is a female group drama. The latter tells the story of five women working together to create a restaurant. It is worth mentioning that this is the second time that Xiaogang Feng has directed a drama series after a lapse of 25 years, following the 1995 "Chicken Feathers in One Place".
Wang Yuqiong, the screenwriter of White Moonlight, once predicted to Poison Eyes the impact of the appearance of female dramas on the market. "When male creators begin to realize that more and more works from the female perspective are gradually attracting attention, in order to compete for the right to tell stories, they will naturally start to highlight the value of women’s existence in their stories."
As Fang Fang, the producer of the female suspense drama Skyscraper, said, the blowout of female themes last year reflected the awakening and expression of female consciousness. Then, behind the phenomenon of the increase of double female drama and female group drama this year, it is the exploration of more dimensions on the basis of establishing concepts and having expression space.
Stills of Skyscraper
3.IP drama word-of-mouth continues to callback, or it will recreate the explosion.
After the IP screenwriter went through a downturn, it gradually ushered in a word-of-mouth callback. Last year, IP dramas accounted for 64% of the head dramas, and Joy of Life’s "Coloured Glass", "Hidden Corner" and other works with both flow and word of mouth emerged. In the drama market in 2021, the power of IP drama can not be ignored.
The writer commented that "only literary works with vitality can withstand various forms of extension." After no longer superstitious about the so-called "big IP", the theme of IP scriptwriting began to be richer. Including the TV series of the same name adapted from Liu Cixin’s science fiction novel "Three-body", the family drama "Children of the Jstars" mentioned above, the adaptation of Jin Yucheng’s novel of the same name, the emotional drama Blossoms Shanghai directed by Wong Kar-wai, and the costume fairy drama "Dust through the ages" adapted from Xianxia’s novel "Ancient Times".
The callback of IP drama’s word-of-mouth cannot be separated from the increase of the original author’s participation. The original author of "Sword Dynasty" was not guilty. It was mentioned that from about 2017, the original author began to seek the "supervision right" from the film and television producers, which means that some scripts can only be modified after the consent of the original author.
Up to now, not only the author has a closer relationship with the screenwriter, but also the original author plays the role of screenwriter in the dramas to be broadcast this year, such as Children of the Qiao Family and Dust through the Ages. Joy of Life’s screenwriter Wang Juan summed up the influence of the relationship between the two on the drama: "When the screenwriter and the author don’t examine each other with their inherent status and position, they constantly discuss the modification space of this work from a professional perspective and in an equal and cooperative relationship, then even if the process is sharp, excellent adaptation works can be born."
In addition, in 2021, a large number of "scheduled explosions" of IP dramas will be ushered in, and the melee dubbed "Change 101" by netizens is about to kick off.
According to statistics, there are 6 dramas that have been released this year, including You on the Left Shoulder, Er Ha and His White Cat Master, Hao Yi Hang, kill the wolf, Tianyake and Zhanggong Case, etc. In addition, popular works such as Silent Reading and heavenly god blesses the people have also entered the casting stage, and at present, 59 novels have been sold for film and television copyright.
After "The Soul of the Town" became popular in The Untamed one after another and cultivated new traffic, Tangai drama became a hot spot in the market, and created a drama publicity mode of "business before broadcast".
At present, the number of CP stations of Leo and Chen Feiyu, the two leading actors of Hao Yi Xing, has exceeded 60; "You on the Left Shoulder" was filmed in Harbin, and many "station sisters" did not fear the cold and followed the whole process; Once the first film of "Zhang Gong Case" was released, it went through a trilogy of praise from the whole network, the voice of the original author and the scuffle of public opinion … It has not been broadcast yet, and it has been very lively.
Not only that, the rumors about stopping filming and broadcasting are also threatening. Because of the special theme, the drama that is delayed is facing potential policy risks. In 2016, Addiction was removed from the whole network. In order to avoid risks, the drama is still facing the challenge of controlling the emotional scale.
At the same time, as the core of the drama, the benefit that CP brings to the drama is a double-edged sword. The scale is too "deliberately selling corruption", and the interaction is not enough, and it is faced with "unbundling". In short, if the after-sales method is not appropriate, it is likely to be attacked.
In any case, this year’s debate on changing dramas has already started, and it is still an unsolved mystery which one can successfully break through and become the next "traffic manufacturing machine".
4. Short plays are difficult to "break the circle", while long plays are still the mainstream form.
As mentioned above, the form of short play was pushed to the forefront last year. Due to the fast plot and compact rhythm, short plays have become a new form that is more in line with the current young people’s habit of watching dramas.
However, as far as the list of films to be broadcast this year is concerned, short plays are still biased towards the "special offer" form of suspense themes. Among the 141 films whose number of episodes has been determined, there are 32 films with less than 24 episodes, and only 8 films with less than 16 episodes, including works with suspense themes such as Deadly Desire, Double Exploration and Cloister Pavilion.
Correspondingly, long dramas are still the mainstream form. This year, there are 71 dramas with more than 40 episodes, more than half.
At the end of February last year, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television issued a notice, resolutely opposing the phenomenon of "water-flooding drama" and advocating that no more than 40 episodes of TV dramas should be filmed and produced. Although the phenomenon of water flooding and prolonged episodes needs to be improved urgently, there are also voices that any form of "one size fits all" should be opposed. The number of episodes is not necessarily equal to water injection. How to take off the hat of "water injection drama" is a test that all long dramas have to face.
The problem of short plays is how to complete "breaking the circle". Although word-of-mouth has been recognized by the market, how to continue the long tail effect of the series after a very short broadcast period, how to arrange troops within a limited publicity period, how to form a more complete and popular brand cooperation form, etc., are the keys to the future development of short plays.
"Theater" is one of the solutions. The integration effect of theater on short plays has been presented in the "Fog Theater". According to Ying Dai, general manager of Iqiyi’s self-made drama development center, the "Misty Theater" not only attracts more than 68 million members to watch, but also has more than 30 brand advertisers for commercial launch and brand linkage. In addition, the mode of "drama with theater, theater with drama" has also been initially run through, and the brand operation has increased the long tail effect of short plays to some extent.
In 2021, theatrical operation has also become the consensus of video platforms. In addition to the suspense brand "Misty Theater", iQiyi has added "Love Theater" and "Little Funny Theater", focusing on sweet pet drama and comedy theme respectively; Mango TV launched the "Monsoon Theater" in the form of network linkage and weekly broadcast; Youku has five theaters of "suspense, doting, Hong Kong drama, urban life and family fun", and the content is more subdivided.
However, as far as the film list published by various theaters is concerned, it seems that the theater is not born entirely for short plays, but for the sake of seizing the flow of the audience, the layout of multiple circles is being carried out at the moment when the head effect of the drama market is weakening.
As screenwriter Yu Fei said, both long plays and short plays have room for development, and the length and quality are not necessarily related. Generally speaking, they are related to the quality and ability of the creators themselves.
In the past 2020, corresponding to the disappearance of head explosions, more high-profile dramas appeared. "The Rise of Chinese Drama" has shown that compared with the impetuous industry in previous years, more practitioners have begun to practice "internal strength". We believe that the era of "content is king" has arrived, and more and more people will catch up with this era.
