All online platforms removed, streaming prohibited: the short drama industry "puts on the brakes"

I believe that many people have seen various types of short dramas on short video platforms. These short dramas are both brainless and addictive, making people unable to stop watching. However, recently, the short drama industry has been removed from the entire network and banned from streaming. Why is this? This article will explain it, you can take a look together.

Recently, the news that four short dramas produced by Mimi Meng’s team were removed from the entire network has successfully pushed this hot track of short dramas to the forefront again.

Because of its compact plot, many twists and turns, and strong sense of excitement, short dramas have been extremely eye-catching and fan-attracting since their inception, and many short video users have already become loyal fans of short drama content.

Places where traffic gathers can naturally also "dig for gold". Since the second half of this year, more and more short dramas have created the wealth myth of "ten thousand yuan of production, one billion yuan of returns".

Under the dual temptation of fame and fortune, many creators are eager to try and get a piece of the pie. The "sudden end" of Mi Meng's team may sound a wake-up call for the majority of practitioners: when supervision is tightened, is the future of short dramas still bright?

1. Mimi Meng was “blocked” again?

According to the self-media Xinwaner, the short drama "As a Stand-in, I Earn a Million a Month" was banned from streaming on December 11. Currently, Kas can no longer search for the official resources of the short drama on various platforms. This means that the four short dramas produced by Mimi Meng's short drama team "Tinghuadao": "As a Stand-in, I Earn a Million a Month", "The Dark Maid", "Assistant Li is So Charming" and "The Black Lotus Manual for Advancing to the Top" have all been removed from the entire network.

As the "traffic queen" during the heyday of WeChat official accounts, Mi Meng's ability to control hot topics is unquestionable. Unfortunately, the original article "The Death of a No. 1 Scholar from a Poor Family" published on her official account in 2019 was confirmed to be fictional and suspected of spreading mourning culture and "toxic chicken soup". As a result, Mi Meng was "banned" by various social platforms and seemed to gradually fade out of people's sight.

However, netizens soon discovered that Mimi Meng, who had quit the official account, had turned to a new track - short videos.

Public information shows that the legal person of Silver Land, an MCN company established in June 2019, is Zhang Jingsi, who was once a shareholder and partner of Mi Meng. At the same time, the email prefix used in the recruitment information released by Silver Land is the same as Mi Meng's email prefix "mm_hr", which shows that there is a close connection between the company and Mi Meng.

Four years later, Silver Land has continued to grow and develop. Currently, it has three well-known talents, namely @姜十七, @乔七月 and @浩杰来了. These three talents are all in the short drama track, and they all have their own representative works and loyal audience groups. Kas carefully browsed the content posted by several accounts and found that their works all have a strong "Mimeng" flavor : most of them are love dramas focusing on emotions. The plot design may be simple but inevitably bloody. The heroine's personality is either the image of a "big heroine" with ability and financial resources, or a "little woman" who is simple, kind and needs to be protected. The hero must be infatuated and doting, which conforms to the image of a "good boyfriend" in the hearts of the public.

@姜十七TikTok video screenshot

It is worth noting that although the overall setting of these short dramas seems a bit simple, the growing attitude of the heroines as the plot progresses, as well as the refreshing feeling when fighting against the "villains", really touched the hearts of many "drama lovers". Many fans said in the comment area that they "get more and more addicted to it". To date, @乔七月 and @浩杰来了 have accumulated more than 10 million fans, and the number of fans of @姜十七 account is as high as 3627.8W, which can be regarded as the top streamer in the short drama track.

In addition to developing its own talent IP, the Mi Meng team is also working hard to create its own drama IP. If it had not been removed from the shelves, the significance of "The Black Lotus Handbook" to the Mi Meng team might be comparable to the original "To the Bitch: Why Should I Help You?!"

The latter helped Mimi Meng's WeChat public account increase its followers to one million in three days, while the former "went viral as soon as it went online". Not only did it quickly become a hot topic on Weibo, it also demonstrated a strong ability to attract money. It was rumored online that its estimated recharge amount in 24 hours exceeded 20 million yuan.

It is understood that "The Black Lotus Manual for Advancing to the Top" is adapted from the online novel "Zhao Hua Luan", which tells the story of the revenge of Song Zhao, the concubine of the Duke of Huguo. The drama has a fast pace, many twists and turns, and the punishment of the villains is "in place". In simple terms, it is a refreshing drama of "revenge of the heroine", which has attracted many viewers to be "addicted" to it.

However, in order to maximize the "coolness", some of the plots in the short play were set up very exaggeratedly, which caused a lot of controversy . For example, in the play, the heroine poisoned her biological father and burned her half-sister to death. But from the previous plot, the father and sister had never done such a "life-threatening" evil, and the heroine's behavior seemed too extreme and violated human ethics and human nature.

@海封新闻TikTok video screenshot

The various platforms also quickly noticed this "threat point". On November 21, WeChat Coral Security issued an announcement: During the special campaign to crack down on illegal short dramas, the platform found that the short drama "The Black Lotus Handbook" exaggerates extreme revenge and violence, confuses the concept of right and wrong, and destroys the good ecology of the platform. The platform has removed the drama from the shelves and now makes it public.

On the same day, Kuaishou Security Center also issued an announcement saying, "Recently, the platform found during inspections that the short drama "The Black Lotus Manual" exaggerates extreme revenge and violence, confuses the concepts of right and wrong, over-exaggerates the evil in human nature, and brings negative value orientation. The platform has removed the drama from the shelves and now makes it public."

Douyin also officially banned the streaming of the drama on December 11, and currently no official resources can be found on the platform.

It is not just "The Black Lotus Manual" that has been removed from the shelves. According to the information of several short dramas previously produced and released by Tinghua Island summarized and sorted out by the self-media Xinwaner, it can be found that none of them escaped the fate of being removed from the shelves, and the reasons for the punishment are different:

"Assistant Lee Is So Charming" was banned on November 20 for violating regulations with its pornographic and vulgar subject matter.

"The Maid" was banned on November 29 for violating the rules with its extreme revenge theme.

"My Monthly Salary as a Body Double Is One Million" was banned on December 11 for allegedly objectifying women and violating public order and good morals.

2. Short dramas are on the rise. Which genres are most popular among users?

According to iMedia Consulting, the market size of China's online micro-short dramas in 2023 was nearly 37.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 267.65%, exceeding half of the size of China's movie box office.

Against the backdrop of the "film and television winter", short dramas not only meet the viewing needs of netizens, but also provide employment opportunities for many film and television industry practitioners. The teams making short dramas are growing stronger and the themes are becoming more diverse.

From a broad perspective, any drama with a single episode length of less than 10 minutes can be called a short drama, but in order to cater to the viewing habits of short video users, many creative teams will compress the time of their works to about three minutes, and some even have only one minute per episode.

The most profound impression of the short play is that it is "bloody and exciting enough". To achieve this goal, the creators not only work hard on the subject matter, using elements such as revenge and sadomasochism to attract attention, but also strictly control the rhythm of the plot to ensure that there is an emotional conflict every ten seconds, and bury a "turning hook" near the end to keep the audience watching the next episode.

After browsing the popular short plays on various platforms recently, Kas found that the popular short plays on short videos recently have the following characteristics:

Most female short dramas focus on love and incorporate elements such as "sweet love", "workplace" and "revenge" to form their own characteristics. It is worth noting that the recent popular female short dramas emphasize the "professional woman" identity of the heroine. According to Kas's observation, among the top 10 short dramas on the Douyin short drama hot list, more than half of the heroines have the label of "career women".

For example, the No. 1 “Awaken! Love Brain” tells the story of the heroine Li Nuannuan who, after being hurt by her scumbag ex-boyfriend and his mistress, becomes obsessed with love and focuses on her career, where she meets her “Son of Love” in the workplace.

At the beginning, Li Nuannuan, who had just switched from the "love field" to the "workplace", also encountered many difficulties and had many shortcomings in her work performance. However, with the hard work of the heroine, she eventually became a strong workplace figure who could stand on her own, and by the way, she also gained perfect love.

@HerWorld Tik Tok video screenshot

It can be seen that at a time when women's awareness of independence is constantly rising, more and more women are paying more attention to their own growth and the realization of their self-worth, and are no longer obsessed with simple love between men and women. Short plays are also keeping up with this "trend" and have increased their focus on this aspect.

The male-oriented short dramas focus more on depicting the growth line of the protagonist . Of course, the love story of the male protagonist is interspersed in the middle, but they are more about showing the process of the protagonist becoming stronger step by step, or telling a story of "he was originally very strong but became silent for some reason, and after waking up, he tried hard to take back everything he once had."

For example, in the ancient fantasy short drama "The Supreme in All Worlds", the male protagonist Ye Chen was thrown off a cliff by his "broken-off" girlfriend and mistress as soon as he appeared, but he found out that there was an ancient empress in his body. With the help of the empress, the male protagonist's cultivation level increased greatly, and he was appreciated by the elders of the gang. Later, he "beat monsters and leveled up" all the way, had constant romantic encounters, and became a master of his generation.

@Short Drama Theater Tik Tok video screenshot

In addition, dramas such as rebirth stories, apocalypse stories, and zombie stories, which are completely detached from reality and rely entirely on "golden fingers" to advance, have also shown strong fan-attracting capabilities and have a large number of fans supporting them.

In addition to the subject matter, Kas also noticed the "little tricks" of some short dramas in filming: they would film a theme as a series of stories instead of just one story. Under this design, the screenwriter only needs to think of a few plots instead of a complete story, which further reduces the difficulty of script creation and greatly facilitates the filming of the series.

Generally speaking, at present, most short dramas on various platforms are still in a relatively early stage. The scripts, shooting, and special effects all seem a bit "shoddy". They can attract audiences more because of the "emotions in place" and satisfying people's "instinctive sense of pleasure" rather than the quality of the work itself.

3. With the tightening of regulations, is the future of short dramas still bright?

This year's short drama track is the most popular.

On the one hand, high-quality works such as "Escape from the British Museum" have become popular, attracting more attention and discussion from netizens; on the other hand, there are reports that many paid short dramas have received recharges of over 100 million yuan. Compared with previous short dramas that could only rely on brand implantation or brand customization to monetize, their ways and abilities to attract money have greatly increased.

In addition, an article by Xiakedao, a public account under the overseas edition of the People's Daily, interviewed Zagu, a senior micro-drama practitioner, and pointed out that the earliest audience of short dramas was basically over 40 years old, but since March and April this year, it has expanded to people around 30 years old. From the comments section of each short drama, Kas can also clearly feel the trend of "younger audiences", and it seems that more and more people are willing to pay for it.

However, risks also come with opportunities.

First and foremost, the real monetization ability of short dramas may be questionable . Industry insiders revealed that although it is common to hear that a short drama has earned tens of millions of yuan in a day, in fact, only 5% of people in the industry are profitable. Among the hundreds of millions of yuan in revenue that the outside world can see, the investment and streaming costs alone will deduct tens of millions. As competition in the short drama market intensifies, such a "high investment" gameplay is bound to face more uncertainties.

It is also worth noting that according to Kass’s observation, the average price of a short drama episode is between 1-2 yuan, which seems cheap, but because of the short duration and the large number of episodes, it is normal to spend hundreds of yuan to watch a drama. This price even exceeds the price of annual membership on some video platforms, and the cost-effectiveness is obviously not high. In the future, when the audience gradually "reacts", such a charging level will surely be difficult to maintain.

Recharge page of "The War Emperor's Iceberg Beauty Wife"

Secondly, the state and various platforms have tightened their supervision of short dramas.

As early as last year, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television has carried out special rectification work on online short dramas. Data shows that between late November 2022 and February 2023, more than 25,300 short dramas totaling 1,365,004 episodes were removed from the shelves due to failure to pass the review, and 2,420 "mini programs" containing illegal content were removed from the shelves.

Not long ago, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television explicitly stated that the rectification of micro-short dramas will become normalized, and it will increase management efforts in seven aspects, including accelerating the formulation of the "Detailed Rules for the Creation, Production and Content Review of Online Micro-short Dramas", studying and promoting the inclusion of online micro-short drama apps and "mini programs" into daily institutional management, establishing a "blacklist" mechanism for mini programs, a statistical mechanism for the promotion of online micro-short dramas, entrusting the China Internet Audiovisual Association to carry out daily monitoring of online micro-short dramas, and carrying out a one-month special rectification work (which has now ended, during which time various platforms have removed more than 2,000 illegal short dramas).

Faced with the country's "heavy blow", various platforms responded positively. WeChat, Douyin, and Kuaishou all removed and banned the illegal content and accounts they reviewed.

In addition, according to a report by the self-media Xinwaner, WeChat has recently started to collect a deposit for short drama mini-programs; Kuaishou announced that it will stop the commercial launch of third-party micro-short drama mini-programs on the evening of December 31; Douyin has also recently released new rules for short drama review and streaming, which can only be streamed after being reviewed and played. In addition, Douyin also prohibits distribution and agency streaming to reduce the risk of third-party violations.

Frankly speaking, judging from the quality of the short plays that Kass has seen, very few works can pass the increasingly stringent regulatory standards. If short play practitioners still want to continue to cultivate in this field, they will have to make some changes.

Author: Jiang Bei, WeChat public account: Kas Data