Skibbies

SSS is doing far better than Pearl Eclipse lol, viewcount wise. i think on the membership list (popular drama or whatever, I'm pretty sure it measures people watching dramas using membership or first drama they watch after subbing/resubbing), it should pass Pearl Eclipse today or tomorrow.

Youku have bunch of xianxia next year, we'll see how it fares. For SSS specifically, tv broadcast is ok for it because it still have decent viewership, it's just it doesn't pay much, but a penny is a penny.

JoL is 9.5b for tencent, it's also broadcasted on iqiyi, which is about the same size as tencent so that's 19b for a drama that's 2 years and a month old. SSS was meant to be another JoL, significant amount of its audience are from JoL. For reference, mid feb 2020, a month after JoL non vip finished broadcasting, tencent had 7.7billion, with half the drama leaked + half the drama fast tracked. Dramas get most of their viewcounts during broadcast, wildly popular dramas tend to get revisited every year.

They weren't forced to watch the video to advance the game, it's one of the daily quests you can do to potentially obtain a hero, you can skip the option. I know the players were pissed, as they normally do when 3d people invade their games lol. The daily lasted 2 weeks+. HnK as a company is one of its producers, the first half of the drama serve as a long ad for the game (that's how the novel was written cos author was obsessed with the game at the time), it's a product literally made where it'd bring new and old players back to the game, it invited real esport players and commentators to cameo the drama, so it was a given HnK would promote it.

I'd note that the drama is also produced by both tencent pictures and penguin pictures, that's two competing production subsidiary (first time i see them cooperate) + top earning gaming subsidiary for a drama, with two very popular pretty leads and the most successful modern webnovel author, tencent NEEDS it to succeed for its ip development narrative :P Just like tencent needs this to succeed too because it has pile of ip waiting to be developed.

1 star rating attacking actors and actresses have been a thing since 2015 (or before, but I didn't use the site before :P). It's true that it's influenced by fandom but it was before too, just matter of scale thing, if anything, 2019 had inflated ratings IMO, 2021 kind of deflated it back to before. Even taking into account fandoms, water armies, mismatch promotion tactics, expectation level, outside drama such as plagiarism or animal abuse (true or not), I still find it more reliable than platform ratings or MDL, it's just you have to discern what rating is good by douban (7+ for general dramas, 6+ for fluff dramas, 6+ for mystery dramas), what it likes, what has big question mark due to fandom. It doesn't really mean that a 5 drama might not be your fav, maybe the problems that bother them doesn't bother you?

The traditional view have always been tv stations had upper hand, and web broadcasting were always on a delay, to the point they have a term for dramas where web broadcasting is ahead of tv broadcasting, it's just not the case for SSS. I'm sure they wanted something that's even more favourable, but as it is, tencent > cctv for SSS, cctv itself have pile of dramas that its audience like lot more than SSS. Pearl Eclipse I feel like putting it on tv was another way to draw in audience, the otp have enough audience base amongst older gen for that.

Aren't the platforms struggling because they are buying massive amount of dramas and spending fortune on questionable projects? At least that's what it looks like on the outside. When you put out what was it 200 dramas (maybe it was 150) a year for iqiyi, a veteran drama watcher might only heard of 50 and your average person might heard of 5, it's kind of rough. They essentially rely on top 10 or 20 to pull in new subbers. Granted I guess 50 of those might be indie projects that rely on clicks for revenue split + short dramas but still.

The fast track offset the member drainage to short videos basically. douyin and such also affected tv ratings too to be fair, and why tv stations are getting more broke every year. With the current situation, and further clamp down on actor salary, I hope that means that it kicks out people who can't act, and producers consider whether this actor fit the role or not, and stop giving me horribly written dramas.

The rumoured budget is way too high and not at all believable considering it's a 2020 project. Even LoF's ridiculous budget (that they wasted) isn't that high. I have no idea where the rumoured budget came from, LoF's and TLB at least had financial reports, this one straight up didn't. 750m is a 2018 level budget, aka Longest Day of Chang'an, tRoP, Rebel Princess, Palace of Devotion (i think the budget is higher for this one rip, production companies) There was a screencap of a post with 800m, but it was 2019 post, with Hou Minghao as lead and for three seasons lol, but it was an uncomfirmed rumour that wasn't widely spread (I don't remember seeing it personally)

I actually don't think tencent lost control over the schedule, the schedule is on purpose. Both Pearl Eclipse and SSS's web schedule are ahead of tv schedule, that means they have more say in this. It's entirely possible for 9.30 slot to air two or three episodes as cctv 8 normally do. There's only one exception, and that's Crime Crackdown airing with Ideal City during summer, CC also had fast track, so again they had upper hand in it. I always presumed the schedule is like this because they air big dramas in a month, which gives ample time for buzz and relevance and people to catch up, then pay subscriptions to watch the ending cos they came in during the 3rd week.

Speculation, I think it might be NCM that needs cashflow, it was in real rush selling Deer & Cauldron and My Best Friend's Story to cctv8 before the year ended last year to make the profit promise. MBFS finished filming in July, it normally should only line up for this year late Q1 or Q2. MHH was slated for Q4 and rushed post production to make the CNY air date. Other NCM projects that aired on cctv8 this year, DLDL, the Rebel, the new Demi God and Semi Devil. cctv is rumour to pay fairly little (compared to provincial stations, but those stations are now broke as heck too, if you look at their line up), but tend to pay really quickly. If MHH had a tv license, it would have definitely went on tv too, the Golden Hairpin probably would have gone to cctv as well. NCM have real knack of pushing their dramas onto tv, which is hard to do when your projects are all huge. Wind blow from Longxi is on cctv's list too by the way.

vlinkage relies on baidu searches and buzz as well as front end viewcounts can be inflated, but when you literally just have buzz, it's uh not the most accurate.

It's by wang juan, JoL and SSS's scriptwriter, but Young blood is his original script. Lower budget, more adventure-ish, lot more plot twists, more bright colours, the fight scenes are terrible IMO but it's not the focus. The closest comparison drama I can think of doesn't have subs, and Ancient Detective (ensemble adventure) is more wuxia + mystery, so this is closest I can do.

I wouldn't really recommend datawin, since it checks for buzz but doesn't take into account viewcounts for some reason. vlinkage is probably slightly better?

try young blood? Luoyang I'm not caught up, I have some minor issues with the frantic pacing and choppy editing, and some unnecessary characterisations, but overall I think it's okay watch

the schedule was determined before they started airing the drama, and tencent did it to extend the airing period so they can gain more subbers + more time for drama buzz, the tv ratings is good side effect for the drama, but likely not their primary concern.

December is fine, multiple rating kings and JoL have this slot. CNY and Summer is better, but when Dec dump multiple big dramas to round off the year, I wouldn't call it bad.

ooh so fast, good job mum!!

go back to qin empire 2 and advisor alliance LOL. you can line up ming dynasty 1566 too if you can sit through dry politics.

??? buddy, SSS is a tencent drama, iqiyi's historical at the moment is Luoyang, Enemy is the cctv8 drama that broadcasts before SSS on tv. SSS is doing less well than expected (cos everyone wanted another JoL), but it's doing better than most of the dramas in the year, should be top 5 for tencent this year.

I'm glad you found win the future hahaha!! he looks less hot in this drama IMO, i love xin zhilei in it though. As for Enemy, I haven't started it yet, I'm in a perpetual catch up drama mode form most of Dec lol.

there was news about selling to tencent, but I think the government stopped it cos it'd break monopoly law or something? It's kind of neat to guess how well platform is doing by analysing its viewer base and its drama's viewcounts. oh yeah that's right, the rural and older audience do tend to not pay for them mhm, awkward.

Oh yeah speaking of which, the guo jingfei drama I mentioned, it's at 20/37 ep, with 9 ep free, guess what, 3 and 4 are vip now lmao. The only time I've seen this is with Imperial Coroner, but at least the drama was finished at the time, and free members watched at least 75% of the drama.

With in house studio, I guess cos the producers are all iqiyi so you can control stuff more, they stole several Huace (Croton Media)'s well known producers and I think some people that worked at tv stations, guess that's for the connections. iqiyi's projects are just super hit and miss, they have dramas I aboslutely love and it's definitely somewhat innovative, but then they have some that's "wait what? you spent 200mil rmb oh THIS?"

you got better sources than me :P mine is all just gossip. baidu does very little to support iqiyi, and it's not doing well in general, but yeah iqiyi's market lies in its large userbase, active userbase that's more rural and older than the other two + its quality dramas occasionally bring it to attentions of vocal netizens. iqiyi is losing its large base though (which it got from aquiring pps i think), even though it's buying massive amount of dramas, more people are turning to short form video. It also have bunch of idols from its idol shows that they have to shove into various dramas i think lol.

There's more of mist theatre, three more i think? there's rumour of them in Q1 but maybe they'll set it to Q4 too. I only like 1/4 of those 50 studios, and they are sort of all over the place, I'd only specifically care about maybe 2 of the studio's stuff, usually the big budget and heavily promoted ones lol.

it's the same scriptwriter, but I'd note, the subtle hint of polygamy is from the novel, not from him, it's common in male centric novels.