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Online drama brings new experience to Chinese audiences
China's online drama industry has been amazing its audience every a few months with a hit drama
By Hu Fan VOL.12 August ·2020-08-11
A still of The Bad Kids (COURTESY)
Qin Hao at the premiere of a movie in 2017 (COURTESY)

China's online drama industry has been amazing its audience every a few months with a hit drama. This time, it is The Bad Kids, a 12-episode detective series launched by Iqiyi, one of China's leading video platforms.

Based on a novel, the drama shows the adventure of three teenagers after they accidentally recorded a murder with their camera when climbing a mountain during their summer vacation.

The drama became a hot topic online soon after its launch. It received almost entirely positive comments from critics and viewers on aspects ranging from picture quality and plot design, which were described by some as "movie level," to the performance of the actors and actresses, including those playing the three teenagers.

It also brought Qin Hao, the actor playing the murderer, into spotlight. Though he has acted in some 50 movies and television dramas and is the winner and nominee of multiple international and domestic awards, the 44-year-old actor came to fame only after the release of this online drama. "I am out of my circle of fans now," he joked in a livestreaming show.

Taking over the market

It was unthinkable for an online drama to have such influence a decade ago. Early works were usually of low quality made with low cost by non-professionals. China's first online video platforms such as Tudou and Youku started mainly with movies and TV dramas already released through traditional channels.

Convinced of the commercial potential of online dramas, Internet giants in China, including Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba, started to enter the market.

The industry has experienced rapid growth ever since. In 2019, 64.2 percent of the 377 new drama series in China were online dramas, according to the 2020 report on China's TV and online drama industry published jointly by Capital Radio & TV Program Producers Association and other organizations.

Along with the investment by the Internet giants came professional production companies that were previously interested only in making TV dramas. Today, it is difficult to tell the difference between TV and online dramas in terms of quality of production, and many online dramas are also played in TV channels.

In the case of Iqiyi, it merged with Baidu in 2013. The Bad Kids is the second one of a package of detective dramas planned by the platform. It pays production companies to make six dramas, each consisting of 12 episodes.

The development came with an increase in viewer willingness to pay for online content. In 2019, Iqiyi had about 107 million subscribers, a 22-percent increase over the last year, though its policy to charge extra money for viewing in advance episodes of Qing Yu Nian, a hit drama of the year, caused controversy across social media.

Game-changing power

If it were not for his daughter, Qin might have missed the chance to be famous. When he was invited to act in Burning Ice, his first online drama which was also a big success, he was somewhat unwilling because of its nature as an online production, although he liked the screenplay and the production team.

He finally joined the cast for the money. After he had a daughter, making money became a more important mission than protecting his own self-esteem. "It turned out I made the right decision," he said in an interview with Life Week.

Online drama has provided great opportunities for actors who were previously not famous like Qin. Another example is Pan Yueming, who was at the bottom of his performing career after injury from a car accident in 2009. In 2017, at the age of 43, he returned to the center stage with his stunning performance in online detective drama Day and Night. The series was so successful that Netflix bought its copyright to show it overseas.

The audience also benefit from the development of online dramas. For years, there is a trend in China that movies and TV dramas are made with heavy investment in stars with a huge fan base but not necessarily good performing skills. This usually leads to poor quality in other aspects such as screenplay and visual effect, though these dramas can be economically successful thanks to the support of young fans.

Online dramas, on the other hand, usually focus on the quality of the production. By hiring less famous, hence less expensive, but skilled actors, they can spare the money for other aspects. Among the production team of The Bad Kids is Joe Cacaci, the screenwriter for Netflix's House of Cards. He was hired by the production company to design the general structure of the drama and the end point of each episode. As a result, each episode ends at a climax in the story, attracting the audience to the next episode.

A compact form with fewer episodes is another benefit for the audience brought by online dramas. One major complaint of Chinese audiences about TV series has been the length. In one extreme case, Empresses in the Palace, a 76-episode television costume piece, was bought by Netflix after it became popular in China and was adapted to six episodes.

The audiences of online dramas seem to have less patience. In Iqiyi's player interface, options are provided to play the video up to two times of normal speed and to watch only the parts of actors or actresses you like. According to the platform, the rate of viewers abandoning a long drama with more than 45 episodes was 56 percent in 2018, an increase of six percentage points than the last year. Online platforms' ability to collect user feedback allows them to respond more swiftly to viewer preference.

Evolving industry

Even with hits like The Bad Kids, the profitability of online dramas is still questionable. In 2019, Iqiyi reported a loss 10.3 billion yuan ($ 1.47 billion). Other leading platforms such as Youku and Tencent Video also registered huge losses.

In the case of finely made short dramas, the cost for a single episode is high and the income from advertisements is limited, as there is limited space to place ads, He Junyi, general producer of The Bad Kids, told Jiemian.com.

Platforms have been making efforts to diversify the sources of income. Iqiyi puts multiple dramas of the same category in one package to form a brand and use the brand to seek commercial cooperation. It provides higher-level membership to viewers willing to pay more for high-quality content. Distributing its works in TV channels is also a way to exploit their value.

He believes the establishment of these profit mechanisms will improve platforms' ability to develop short dramas sustainably. "The era of short dramas will come in the foreseeable future," he said.

(Print Edition Title: Dense Delight)

Comments to hufan@chinafrica.cn

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