Long video theater midfield battle

This article mainly discusses the development status and future trends of China's long-form video theater, including how major video platforms promote the production and promotion of original content through the theater model, and the impact of theatricalization on optimizing content classification and improving production quality.

The theater approach of long videos began in 2020. iQiyi and Youku faced off in the fields of suspense and sweet pets, Mango TV was left alone, and Tencent Video was reluctant to leave. This pattern lasted for more than three years until Tencent Video launched the "X Theater" in 2023, prompting a reshuffle.

First, in the second half of 2023, with "Legend of the Magpie Sword Gate" and "Hometown, How Are You?" as nodes, Tencent Video has successively launched the "Bench Unit" and "Firefly Unit". Secondly, in April and May of this year, not only did the "Misty Theater" return, but various platforms also coincidentally iterated the theater:

On April 22, Youku announced that it would upgrade its previous "Suspense Theater" to "White Night Theater". On April 23, iQiyi officially announced "Moisture Theater" and "Everyone Theater". In early May, the two finalists of the "Battle of Elite Short Dramas", "New Life" and "My Altay", were from "White Night Theater" and "Moisture Theater", respectively, successfully making a name for their respective labels.

In addition, on April 26, Mango TV's four platforms also announced a new series plan at the Spring Festival investment promotion meeting. With the Golden Eagle Exclusive Theater, which mainly promotes top dramas, as the core, five new series brands, "Qingmang", "Xingmang", "Jinmang", "Fengmang" and "Da Mang", were added, focusing on different groups and content categories such as love, costumes, mature people, suspense themes, and short dramas.

Looking back to 2020, in order to solve the problems of short production cycles and difficulty in attracting investment, a large number of theater-based strategies have emerged, which have triggered many discussions inside and outside the industry and were once regarded as a panacea for long videos. Fortunately, it is still evolving today. What is worth discussing is: what is the direction of this round of theater evolution? Which of the theatrical concepts of the year have been confirmed and continued, and which have been falsified and abandoned?

1. The fifth year of theatricalization, moving away from genres

Let’s first briefly review the initial configuration of each company.

iQiyi launched the famous "Misty Theater" in June 2020, and struck while the iron was hot at the investment promotion conference at the end of the same year, officially announcing the "Love Theater" focusing on romance dramas and the "Xiaodou Theater" focusing on comedies.

Youku launched the "Pet Theater" in March 2020, and formally proposed the layout of five major theaters in August of the same year. In addition to the most familiar "Pet Theater" and "Suspense Theater", it also includes "Family Theater", "Hong Kong Theater" and "Urban Theater". Hunan Satellite TV and Mango TV also released the "Monsoon Theater" plan in October of this year.

Taking 2023 as the dividing line, the most intuitive change in comparing the two generations of theaters is "naming". First, it is no longer unconditionally called "XX Theater", but new terms such as "unit" and "label" have emerged. Second, it is no longer simply and crudely named by type.

Some pay attention to the meaning and are quite literary; some not only pursue recognition, but also pursue relevance to the platform. For example, the "white night" in "White Night Theater" not only implies "the long night will end and the truth will be revealed", but also obviously cues the early meritorious project "White Night Chase", repeatedly reminding the audience of Youku's achievements in the suspense genre.

Behind the name, there is a deeper change in the logic of theater organization and division. The mainstream division method of the first generation of theaters was based on the type of drama, and the most representative one was the three theaters of the pioneer iQiyi.

Three of Youku's five major theaters are also like this, while the remaining "Hong Kong Theater" and "Family Theater" are more like repackaging the platform's featured content, Hong Kong dramas and Northeastern comedies. "Monsoon Theater" is not limited to any genre and is a trial of Mango TV's boutique short dramas. When it was officially announced, it clearly stated the specification of "12 episodes x 70 minutes".

By 2023, Tencent Video, which had been waiting for a long time before taking action, brought a new theater idea: not by series type, but by project demands.

This can be an aesthetic appeal. For example, the "X" in "X Theater" stands for infinite possibilities, unknown exploration and pioneering expression; "Moisture Theater" and "Everyone Theater" are based on depicting ordinary people, one focuses on new aesthetics and new audio-visuals, and the other focuses on adapting the works of everyone (basically, it can be understood as: input serious literature, output word-of-mouth drama); the upgrade of "White Night Theater" is not only adjusted from the past "suspense +" to the deep cultivation of "social reasoning", but also reflected in the joint creation with film directors to create high-quality pioneering short dramas.

It can also be an emotional appeal. For example, the "Bench Unit" is dedicated to lunchtime joy, and the "Firefly Unit" and "Dust Theater" both emphasize healing properties based on the dramas that have been aired.

Or it could be a call for new categories. "Micro-Dust Theater" and "Everyone Theater" focus on ordinary people, "Firefly Unit" focuses on women's issues and has launched a series of adult love stories such as "I Know I Love You" and "Spring for Lovers", and "Golden Mang Label" claims to serve the mature population, which can all remind people of some very specific mass calls.

This level of transformation is bound to be accompanied by the birth of a number of new brands and the exit of some old brands from the historical stage. This year, the official press release and resource manual of iQiyi World Conference both skipped the "Love Theater", and Mango's spring investment promotion no longer mentioned the "Monsoon Theater".

Youku's "urban theater" seems to have stopped at "All the Way to the Sun" in last summer's movie season. The slogan used to promote "The Moon Embers" is also "the first brand of Xianxia", rather than promoting the entire "Pet Theater" as in the early years, which can also be seen as a signal.

2. The new stage of domestic dramas and long videos

Why did these changes occur? First, five years of theatre practice have left many lessons learned, among which the relationship between theatre and genre is a core issue.

For example, if a theater is directly attached to a certain genre, it is likely to cause the theater to rise and fall with the genre market. In 2020, the "Misty Theater" was in the limelight, but the suspense genre fell into a slump the following year, and the theater competition was replaced by two sweet pet theaters. Now that the anti-love trend is prevalent, traditional idol dramas are in a clear decline, and the presence of the two sweet pet theaters has been greatly reduced.

For example, not all popular genres are suitable for theater. Conventional romance scripts are the daily content of various platforms throughout the year, and it is difficult to differentiate them. More importantly: the consumption habits of the audience of romance dramas and the audience of suspense dramas are different.

The audience of romantic dramas may recognize the star actors and the original IP, but not necessarily the brand like the audience of suspense dramas. In addition, the emotional endurance of drama fans and CP fans is relatively long now, and the traffic fan circle has the rule of avoiding the works of the same period. The scheduling of suspense dramas can achieve traffic and word-of-mouth effects, but the scheduling of romantic dramas may make the two dramas become rivals, and the fans of the dramas draw clear boundaries or even attack each other, which goes against the original intention of theatricalization.

Even for the most successful theatrical suspense drama, if we ask: What has theater brought to the suspense genre? The answer is mixed.

In 2020, the theater approach has indeed solved many practical problems, allowing high-quality suspense short dramas to emerge in a spurt, and truly taking root in the Chinese drama ecosystem. However, with the suspense theater war on multiple platforms and the centralized scheduling strategy adopted by some platforms, aesthetic fatigue has come faster than ever before.

The audience of suspense short dramas can be said to be the most picky group of viewers. They hope to watch suspense dramas frequently, and will not hesitate to give low scores if they find that the plot is cliché and the ending is bad. So in general, this kind of content is more valuable for quality rather than quantity. A single drama can pursue industrialized management to improve quality control, but it is not necessary to force industrialized continuity and replication.

It is precisely at this point that the "Misty Theater" took a detour. In the same period of drama, the king is often set off as more king, and the scoundrel is set off as more scoundrel. In non-contemporary dramas, we can already see the existence of some ancestral formulas: 2021's "The Mystery of the Octagonal Pavilion" and 2022's "The Returning Daughter" are both "family suspense + southern small town + movie lineup", which is hard not to remind people of "The Bad Kids". "Multi-time and space narrative + tracing old cases" has been passed down for at least three generations until this year's "The Untold Story".

In fact, even if we don’t talk about theaters, but look at the overall development of genre dramas, Chinese dramas have also entered a chaotic period in recent years. With the rapid changes in the social environment and audience psychology, the ups and downs of genres, the popularity and disfavor of genres have been accelerated, and difficult-to-classify hits and difficult-to-explain flops are appearing more and more frequently.

It can be said that whether it is dramas, variety shows or movies, the guiding role of emotions has surpassed the original content type system, and it is better to customize on demand than to follow the routine. This is also becoming a new consensus and new focus of long video platforms.

In this way, the theater’s primary task is no longer to reduce costs and increase efficiency - such as packaging existing genres and solving the worries of publicity and commercialization; but to assist in the development of innovative content, give it appropriate conceptual packaging, guide the public to form correct expectations about it, and attract and retain core audiences.

Just imagine, if "Dust Theater" and "Da Jia Theater" had appeared a year earlier, perhaps "Moses on the Plain" would not have been classified as "Misty Theater" and become the most out of place among them, and could only console itself by winning awards abroad.

3. A more rational future?

After all, the theaters of satellite TV in the early years were for the convenience of attracting investment. The long-video theaters, especially the "Misty Theater", are naturally linked to the platform's self-produced business and high-quality short dramas, becoming a display of the platform's aesthetics. Now it can be said that they have returned to their original intentions.

Compared with 2020, a welcome change in long videos is that their determination has been strengthened. They are no longer scrambling for territory or hastily following trends, and their differentiated advantages have further surfaced.

iQiyi has been running wildly on the road of "TV-like", and has established a stable drama delivery relationship with CCTV, and has also been the most restrained in its response to short dramas. At this year's iQiyi World Conference, CEO Gong Yu said that in the future, he would serve the "old and the young" well, and it was not surprising that the theater specializing in serious literary IP first appeared on iQiyi.

Tencent Video has long written "art" into its platform strategy. It can make the most conservative and boring S+ ancient idol dramas, and it can also take the most unexpected innovative steps. In many ways, "The Three-Body Problem" and "Flower City" are not gambles that ordinary platforms can afford. "X Theater" only drops four films a year (this will be the case in 2023, and it is still unknown this year), which is a replica of this rhythm.

Many platforms have offered olive branches to TVB and Hong Kong teams, but only Youku has persisted to the end. With the success of "News Queen" and Alibaba's support for Hong Kong art, Youku's "Hong Kong Drama Theater" can be said to be the only one of its kind.

In addition, in 2023, Youku has produced 8+ points works in both the live-action comic adaptation track and the male-oriented boutique short drama - "Under the Alien" and "Like Fire Flowing Years". Regarding differentiation, Youku's latest statement in 2024 is "one horizontal and three verticals". The "one horizontal" refers to the treasure library, and the "three verticals" are "historical mystery universe" (ancient suspense), "dawn universe" (modern suspense) and "boy fantasy universe" (comic adaptation and science fiction).

"Monsoon Theater" did not bring much help to Mango TV in the battle of high-quality short dramas, but the lost ground was eventually regained in the horizontal screen Chinese dramas. The "Big Mango Project" became famous with popular online dramas such as "Nian Nian Wu Ming" and "Xu Yan". Starting in 2023, Mango TV began to try to combine the content advantage with its own scheduling advantage and send "Feng Yue Bian" to the satellite. Among the five major brands recently announced, "Big Mango" is still on the list.

Of course, although the logic of theater organization is de-typifying, each theater still intersects in some types, which in a sense also indicates which innovative tracks have received the most attention and resource investment.

First of all, it’s still suspense. IQIYI has not given up on the “Misty Theater”, Youku’s “White Night Theater” has just been upgraded, and Mango TV has separated out a separate label “Fengmang”. Tencent Video’s “X Theater” claims to have “one drama, one style” regardless of genre, but where can the high-quality suspense short dramas in its list go?

The second is comedy. Youku is lying flat on its back with the IP of "Country Love", while iQiyi's "Xiaodou Theater" and Tencent Video's "Bench Unit" are interested in developing new comedy content, competing not only in attracting people, but also in innovation, aesthetics, and the entire comedy ecosystem.

Finally, there is a new type of urban drama with more refined volume, higher quality, and topics and concepts that keep pace with the times. Tencent Video's "Firefly Unit" is prepared for this purpose, and the second part of iQiyi's "Dust Theater" "In the World" focuses more on urban scenes than "My Altay".

Mango TV has a director named Li Mo who has already made a name for himself in this field, and has also set up a special label called "Golden Mango". Youku's "Hong Kong Drama" is not limited to any subject matter, but as can be seen from "News Queen", Hong Kong people have a deep accumulation of this type of content and are also a creative force that cannot be ignored.

We expect and believe that after five years of exploration, this new round of theater wars will be more rational and bring more innovative content to the audience. But then again, every time I check the list of movies, I feel that there are so many dramas to be broadcast. And when they are broadcast silently (not a big flops), what makes them not get a chance to be tasted?

Author: Gu Han, Editor: Li Chunhui

Source: WeChat public account "Entertainment Hard Candy (ID: yuleyingtang)"