After Years of Family Squabbles, Are TV Dramas Finally Doing Something for Young People? | 2015 Youth Series

This is part of QDaily's year-end "youth" series. We look at the biggest change in China's TV drama industry this year.

In our previous piece, "2015 Year in Review: TV Dramas Go Big", we noted that this year the dramas about mothers-in-law and family quarrels, after dominating the screen for years, began to make way for dramas made for young people.

The year's most popular dramas, The Journey of Flower, The Disguiser and Nirvana in Fire, brought young viewers back to a TV drama market that had grown stale.

The most important buyers of these dramas, the TV stations, have never been so eager to win over young audiences. These viewers are more active on social networks and have more money to spend. Win them over and you win over brand advertisers, who have become the stations' most important source of revenue.

Even CCTV is no exception. The details it has released about its 2016 advertising auction contain a fact many people overlooked. The ad slot in the last 10 seconds of Network News, the traditional "bid king", sold this year for 75 million yuan. The exclusive title sponsorship of the variety show Impossible Challenge, by contrast, went for 300 million yuan: the highest price of any single CCTV ad package announced so far, and four times the price of the traditional bid king. Of the nine items in the auction, three variety shows account for more than 50% of the revenue.

Impossible Challenge also invited TFboys as guests...

The Voice of China Season 4 alone is expected to bring Zhejiang Satellite TV about 2 billion yuan in revenue. For comparison, the channel's total advertising revenue for all of 2014 was only about 5 billion yuan. Yili paid 500 million yuan to become title sponsor of Where Are We Going, Dad? Season 3, and Uxin paid 30 million yuan for the best 60-second ad slot in the Voice finale.

Advertisers pay because variety shows are what young people are eager to watch.

Catching the latest episode of Where Are We Going, Dad? or Running Man on a Friday night has become one of the few reasons young people still turn on the TV. As they watch, they discuss and share on social networks. On Weibo, Where Are We Going, Dad? drew a staggering 31.4 billion reads and 39.72 million discussion posts, while Running Man and The Voice drew 20.9 billion and 11.2 billion reads.

From Season 2, Where Are We Going, Dad? aired simultaneously on Hunan Satellite TV and Mango TV. On the day the show went online, Mango TV's Baidu search index stood at 30,000 before the broadcast and 110,000 after it. By Season 3, in the single week before the show aired, data from 360 Mobile Assistant alone showed the Mango TV app downloaded 260,000 times, overtaking Tudou and Xunlei to rank eighth in weekly downloads among video apps.

Seen against this trend, it is only natural that TV dramas should get younger.

Before these youth-friendly variety shows appeared, dramas were the only thing TV stations had worth showing off. But rerunning The New Legend of Madame White Snake and Drawing Sword every summer no longer interested young viewers. For TV stations, younger dramas are not a phenomenon but a strategy: they need dramas that suit young people's tastes.

In 1992, filming began on The New Legend of Madame White Snake

And so the change came.

Nearly all of this year's big-budget dramas that we mentioned in the previous article are closely tied to the push for younger audiences.

City of Fantasy, now in production, has a budget of more than 300 million yuan, and everything from its story and casting to its costumes and props caters to the tastes of today's young viewers.

Its director, Ju Jueliang, made his name with Jin Yong adaptations such as The Legend of the Condor Heroes. He has also shot the revolutionary drama Bodyguards and Assassins and traditional period dramas such as Li Wei the Magistrate and Huo Yuanjia. In recent years, though, he has started taking on different kinds of drama. In the year before City of Fantasy, he took on The New Xiao Shiyilang, which overturned its source novel, and the fantasy drama Zhu Xian.

Ju Jueliang served as executive director of the 1983 version of The Legend of the Condor Heroes

These new dramas were built around young people's wants from the premise up. The Journey of Flower wrapped a "domineering CEO falls for a girl" story in period costume, while The Disguiser brought idol-drama appeal to the dull genre of anti-Japanese war dramas. Yes, they were all made for young people.

Go back just five years and the picture was completely different. Dramas then still served family audiences, and they took either the classic route or the domestic-squabble route.

With those categories in mind, look at the most popular dramas of the past five years: the new Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the new Journey to the West, the new Water Margin, the new Dream of the Red Chamber, Golden Wedding, My Chief and My Regiment, Marriage Defense War and Lurk.

Lurk, the 2010 spy drama

They were produced by state-backed outfits such as the TV Production Center of the Communication University of China, China Film Group and the Beijing TV Arts Center, or by long-established film and TV companies such as Bona Film and Huayi Brothers. Private drama companies were rare among them, and hardly anyone was thinking about making dramas for young people.

Last September, Hou Hongliang left Shandong Film and TV Group, where he had worked for many years, to run the production company Daylight Entertainment, which until then had only done post-production and special effects for TV dramas. In his first year outside the state system, several of his dramas were huge hits. The Disguiser and Nirvana in Fire, the two hottest dramas of the year, both came from Hou.

A still from The Disguiser

He does not think the two dramas caught on among young people because he set out to make them for young people. "When I read the online discussion of The Disguiser, I felt out of place. It was all 'CP' (fan-shipped couples) and so on. I had to be taught what that meant," Hou told QDaily. He believes that a changing market and the return of young viewers mean dramas must "cover more subjects" and "give viewers something fresh", while the industry's growing ties to the internet mean thinking about "how to interact and talk with everyone, with viewers, and get what they're into."

One thing is certain: things have changed. In the past, powerful players like CCTV made big dramas aiming to produce classics. Now newcomers like Daylight Entertainment make big dramas around what young people want.

Since the "one drama, two satellite channels" policy, which limits a drama to two satellite channels at once, both producers and TV stations have been under more pressure, with more rivals chasing limited advertising money. Targeted products, such as dramas aimed at younger viewers, attract advertisers more easily. Next to fantasy dramas like City of Fantasy and Zhu Xian, which young viewers love, a drama like Big Yangko, despite respectable ratings, has far less commercial value, or appeal to brands.

TV stations want these expensive dramas to earn as much advertising money as possible, and weekly scheduling has become their new experiment. In July 2014, after several trial runs of weekly dramas, Hunan Satellite TV formally launched its "Diamond Exclusive Theater", airing two days a week, two episodes a day.

First up was the period xianxia fantasy Swords of Legends. Its 52 episodes ran for three months, covering the whole summer holiday. Its leads, Li Yifeng, William Chan and others, gained a following, and the weekly slot proved it could work.

Swords of Legends turned several actors into stars almost overnight

After Swords of Legends, Diamond Exclusive Theater aired the period drama Romance in the Wind, a new The Return of the Condor Heroes, and Young Four Great Constables, which billed itself as a "beauty, mystery, chivalry and romance epic". By the time of the xianxia sensation The Journey of Flower, Diamond Exclusive Theater had become Hunan Satellite TV's flagship slot.

Young Four Great Constables, which billed itself as a "beauty, mystery, chivalry and romance epic"

The Journey of Flower premiered on June 9 with a 1.009% rating and a 6.028% share of its time slot. But because it aired weekly, buzz had time to build, and its ratings rose week after week. When the final episode aired on September 7, its rating hit 2.784% and its share 15.628%.

Over the summer it not only squeezed the many urban dramas airing at the same time, such as Empty-Nest Grandpa, Love Clinic and Twin Flowers, but also knocked out a rival xianxia drama, Hua Xu Yin: The City of Lost Love. The advertisers who had paid heavily were naturally delighted.

Please enjoy a still from Empty-Nest Grandpa

The model will carry over to new dramas premiering next year.

In 2016, the Diamond Exclusive Theater dramas with the highest ad prices are the fantasy dramas City of Fantasy and Zhu Xian, each with a title sponsorship of 55 million yuan. Each drama also has three partner advertisers paying 20 million yuan apiece, plus one "theater highlights" advertiser paying 6.5 million yuan.

That brings advertising for a single drama to 120 million yuan, not counting the sponsors of the slot as a whole. At its sponsorship conference at the end of this year, Hunan Satellite TV announced that Junlebao had paid 300 million yuan to become a partner of both the Golden Eagle Exclusive Theater and the Diamond Exclusive Theater.

After Diamond Exclusive Theater's success, Dragon TV, Zhejiang Satellite TV, Jiangsu Satellite TV and Beijing Satellite TV all launched weekly drama slots. Even a weaker station, Guizhou Satellite TV, announced a weekly slot called "Youth Plus" for 2016.

Character posters already released for Zhu Xian

Keeping a drama hot week after week, of course, demands more from producers: more appealing casts, the right kind of story, better costumes and effects. One way to borrow strength is to spin dramas off from variety shows that have already succeeded.

Zhejiang Satellite TV has announced that in 2016 it will make three weekly in-house dramas to pair with its major variety shows: Run, Honey with Running Man, The Best Choice: TAXI with The Voice of China, and Dream Takes Flight with China's Dream Show.

In fact, back in June 2013, when If You Are the One was still hosted by Huang Han and Le Jia, Jiangsu Satellite TV and Dragon TV jointly aired a drama called The New Era of Love. Written by Wang Hailing, it revolved around blind dates and "leftover" single men and women, and its characters and views on love were modeled on typical guests from the show. The hosts and popular guests also appeared in the drama.

Besides these in-house spin-offs made for weekly slots, another variety-linked drama, Three Dads, aired this October. Produced by Yaoke Media and broadcast on Zhejiang Satellite TV and Shenzhen Satellite TV, it starred Li Chen, Zhang Xinyi, Chen He, Zhang Meng and Tian Lei.

In Three Dads, Chen He handles the laughs, just as he does on variety shows

Its time slot was exactly when Zhejiang Satellite TV's Running Man and Shenzhen Satellite TV's China-Korea Dream Voice aired. Of Li Chen, Zhang Xinyi and Chen He, one was a guest on Running Man and the other two were regular cast members, while Zhang Meng and Tian Lei were guests on Yaoke's in-house variety show China-Korea Dream Team.

The drama was built around a topic young people care about, "not knowing how to raise a child", and around comedy that suits variety-show stars. From casting to broadcast platform and time slot, the producer and the two satellite stations planned it in advance to complement the variety shows.

In the end, TV stations fight this hard to compete with ever more powerful video sites.

Luo Gang, producer of City of Fantasy, admits they care more about revenue from video sites. Five companies, iQiyi, Youku, Tencent, PPTV and Sohu, jointly bought City of Fantasy, and the video sites are paying more than Hunan Satellite TV paid for exclusive broadcast rights.

City of Fantasy cast newcomer Song Qian as its female lead because she is popular with young people

Huaer Films, producer of The Legend of Mi Yue, which has just begun airing, is wholly owned by LeTV. Even so, to earn more money and publicity, LeTV sold the rights to this drama, a hit before it even aired, to Tencent Video as well as to Dragon TV and Beijing Satellite TV.

Video sites are where most of China's young consumers gather, so when buying dramas they favor youth-oriented ones, which are more likely to draw viewers and advertisers. That in turn pushes producers to make more dramas for young people.

Video sites want to go further and work directly with producers, as TV stations do, to commission dramas made for them. Hou Hongliang, producer of Nirvana in Fire and The Disguiser; Tang Lijun, producer of The Journey of Flower; Li Shaohong, director of When Oranges Turn Red; and Yu Zheng, screenwriter of Palace: Lock Heart Jade, all drama makers with a style of their own, announced this year that they and their companies would work with video sites.

Palace: Lock Heart Jade: not just the actors' "look" but their acting too was "for young people"

The reasons are simple. Video sites face fewer policy restrictions, have room for more episodes and genres, can schedule and release more flexibly, and have more ways to make money.

Overseas counterparts such as Netflix and Amazon are doing the same. They moved from buying dramas to investing in and producing their own original series, gradually building a complete production chain, and they have their own well-developed methods for steering conversation and shaping viewing habits.

One fact is plain: in the TV drama market, TV stations matter less and less. They are anxious to win back their say. But even Mango TV, which Hunan Satellite TV built up itself, has not become competitive enough against its rivals.

Platforms and channels are the easiest things for newcomers to overturn, and content is growing ever more valuable. The problem is that TV stations' own content holds no advantage in drama production. Since dramas are one of the stations' most important sources of revenue, they may face an even bigger crisis ahead.

2015 opened with the dreaded "one drama, two satellite channels" policy. At the time, production companies complained of lost income and TV stations of heavier ratings pressure. By year's end, the production companies, which had been hit hardest by the policy, were brimming with confidence; the video sites had found backers and could keep on buying; and the TV stations, originally the policy's beneficiaries, were bracing for tougher challenges.