PeachBlossomGoddess

There is only one downside to watching NIF which is you will go into a deep slump and dislike everything else after watching that.

Both protagonists are grey characters. And yes, he is behind some of the chaos but there are other villains.

That writer is a real prude and deserves to be smacked on the head. Princess Weiyoung they were a real couple and we didn't even get a kiss. Now my expectations are at zero for a kiss.

Yeah its a bit of a logic hole. The truth is another kid does not have to be a threat to her grandson's position and Lingyi was always going to re-marry/promote another concubine to be his legitimate wife. Shiyi is supposed to be protective of Luo family interest and grandson and I think she will be. After all they are a big family with many responsibilities, it is always good to have more than one son that can shoulder the responsibilities. I think Lingyi only started to avoid his other wives when he saw how paranoid and hysterical his first wife became over perceived threats to her son. He decided to avoid creating this competitive and hostile environment in his household. But with Shiyi he can see that she is not that kind of person and genuinely cares for his son. I guess her stepmom doesn't see this yet.

She is at least 18 by now - there was a 1 year mourning period for his first wife and it was her mother's 1 year death anniversary. While I generally agree with what you have said, I suspect they are delaying this natural evolution to toss in a third party love rival and go down another divorce (this time possibly real) arc. Which is gonna be a frustrating way to extend the plot bc you know we have to get to 45 episodes so...

While the latest scenes were cute and funny, I am getting a bit irritated. Idk what is going on with Shiyi but she is obviously into Lingyi, why is she being so coy? They are married for crying out loud!

my stomach still hurts... wipes tears.

He is devastated because 1. all the revelations makes him realize he may have f*-ed up big time and did some terrible things to some innocent people, 2. he is ashamed and doesn’t know how to confess the whole truth to ZZS - what happened to him subsequently and his ghost valley identity; 3. don’t forget ghost valley killed Chengling’s father and brothers; 4. Finally and worse of all ZZS said he is relieved and content to die and leave his responsibility to rebuild four seasons to WKS and CL. Poor guy his world is falling apart around him the shidi thing is not why.

China Literature paid Tencent 15.5bn for this in 2018 and they fell so far short of those targets that they had to write off 3.7bn of it so far. They are capped on their licensing fees (this is the revenue part) from Tencent to 1550mm (2021), 2000mm (2022) and 2400mm (2023). The profit target has now been revised to 300mm per year from 2020-2024 but capped at 500mm. Since they lost 100mm in 1H20, they gonna have to make 400mm from those shows you mention in 2H to make the target - seems difficult if you ask me. If they could only make 500mm with a Joy of Life kind of level of hit you can imagine its not gonna be that easy to meet the targets. Looks like those targets are set to help Tencent manage their losses more than anything.
NCM has a pretty good website:
https://www.ncmchina.com/

iQiyi is worse - they lost 7bn RMB last year and 27bn rmb the last 3 years in total! I think they will still lose about 3-4bn this year with the 25pct price rise.

Btw you should check out this YY - lots of skimpily clad young girls lip syncing some popular songs getting tipped huge amounts of money to chat with big tippers... while our platforms try to produce good content and all they do is print losses... I can't believe the censors are wasting time on dramas when there is all kinds of nonsense like that happening.

I think they should just ditch the advertising outside of product placement in drama and make everyone pay to view and go full turkey into the Netflix model. No more free content for anyone period. They actually can crack down on the illegal sites like dramacool but they just don't want to - their technology is much better than Netflix etc at prohibiting content theft. They don't do it because then all the non-paying (international) viewers will migrate onto their platforms and give them server issues. As it is they have 3x the no of non-paying domestic subscribers on their platform as they do paying subscribers. Which is fine bc advertisers pay for the cost of servicing these subscribers. But these are local products the advertisers are only targeting the China market so the platforms are happy to let the international non paying subscribers watch from ïllegal" sites. I am happy to pay to support the platforms but that is also why I don't get fussed about people watching from illegal sites either.

LoL - its my job, not really connections. I cover internet and media I have to talk to them regularly. Tencent hides their digital media numbers but they sold New Classics Media to China Literature (which is also owned by Tencent) a few years ago and China Literature just had to write off CNY3.7bn for the acquisition of New Classics Media. Which is the production company that produced Joy of Life which was the huge hit in 2019 and so they made over 500mm CNY in profit but last year they lost 100mm CNY in just the first half. If you look at the numbers you will get a sickening feeling about how unprofitable this business is... Chinese subscribers are spending much more money on this nonsensical YY and other short form video platforms but they won't pay for long form. I think its because they are so used to getting it for free they just don't want to pay.

The reason for that is some regions have rules and restrictions around the kind of content that gets distributed into those markets. For example, Muslim countries have their own set of censorship standards that the platforms have to navigate before making their content available. North America is also a very fussy place with a lot of regulation and since Alibaba and iQiyi have US listings, they don't want to run foul of US regulators. The other reason is the platforms license about half of their content from independent production companies. These licenses are based on regions and that is why sometimes people from certain regions are blocked. Usually that means someone else licensed it on an exclusive basis for that region or that the platform doesn't have enough subscribers in that region to justify the incremental licensing cost.

You may be better off contacting their respective investor relations teams. I speak to them every quarter and have already said my piece many times but their response is pretty much along the lines I described below. Nonetheless hearing from more people helps. For Youku you can reach out to both Alibaba IR and Alibaba Pictures IR. The contacts are all online. IR communicates directly with senior management. Their Weibo pages are just for managing fan mail, unless there is huge aggregated feedback, I doubt it will ever reach the ears of decision makers. FYI their IR teams are fluent in English so more people should feel free to email them and tell them they are willing to pay for English subbed content.

Youku is owned by Alibaba which is a behemoth that is mostly focused on online retail businesses. Even though Youku loses a few bn CNY every year, its a drop in the bucket for them and the entire industry is loss making so for them, it is not a priority area to invest further resources. iQiyi which is owned by Baidu and Tencent Video are much more social media and gaming focused than Alibaba is so there are more synergies between the long form video business with their other businesses, esp the games. Between the 3 platforms, they have 300mm paying subscribers in China - they are much more focused on getting that number to 600mm or even 1bn than getting more international subscribers at this point. For all its effort, iQiyi only has 2mm international subscribers and only a small fraction of that 2mm actually pays. It doesn't move the needle for them at all. Tencent doesn't disclose this information but I can't imagine its that different. The economic incentive for any of these platforms to go after international subscribers is unfortunately very low. I am actually quite surprised they even bothered. I think iQiyi and Tencent only started going after international users because Netflix started gaining many international users on the back of content they were licensing from them. Notice recently they haven't licensed any content to Netflix - that is because they would rather go after the subscribers directly. Because Youku doesn't have an international platform, they are more likely to be willing to license content to Viki, Netflix or Amazon Prime, especially in certain regions where it doesn't make sense for them to distribute content.

I knew I could put the words in your mouth.

The latest 18.

I am devastated by Guard Geng. Like I don't want to keep watching.

He hasn't revealed his Ghost Valley identity yet but he has finally told ZZS who he really is.

That is easy - ZZH.

He already did - the fake Hanging Ghost he killed with ZZS. I just haven't figured out who was disguised as the Hanging Ghost. Some of them obviously know he is traveling incognito in the martial world- Gu Xiang, Xi Sang Gui (the white haired one) and Liu Qianqiao although I am sure he has shared his plans with nobody.