Skibbies

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.

I excluded bl, also i think only immortality might qualify for s+? The others are S at most? Fated General as in ZRY's drama? baidu tells me it's slated for youku, its producers doesn't have any of the platforms, but it's stuck in perpetual license hell so uh lol.

s+: mirror twin city, liu yifei + chen xiao's, yang yang + zhao lu si's, then two i'm not sure if it's s+ or s, xiao zhan + ren min, wu lei + zhao lu si, then there's unfilmed JoL s2, MHH s2, yang mi's new historical

for youku, psychologist was meant to be the big gun, zhou xun and huang lei's drama is big too, but i think it's doing so so on viewcounts, it has zhao liying's rural drama in the line up i think. If you are thinking of historical, I think dilireba and ren jialun's got license, but idk if they finished the post productions.

for iqiyi, its two q3 drama both got stuck, li xian's drama still doesn't have a license, and huang jingyu + xiao zhan's is....well i think it was waiting for tv slot, now i'm not so sure. q4 originally only had mist theatre + luoyang iirc. It has Guo jingfei's cctv8 drama right now, but it's also doing so so, that's fine, at least it has exclusive, unlike in october and november lol.

I saw some list all the dramas platforms filmed second half of the year, and surprisingly, despite iqiyi being broke as heck, and tencent should have all the money, iqiyi had the most projects, tencent had the least, youku have a lot xianxia????

come watch win the future with me :P it's chen kun and xin zhilei's office drama, power couple aww yesss. there's no kissing yet and all they talk about is work, but the chemistry is pretty good :D (or you could wait till i see them kissing......idk when that is.....)

JOL s2's issue was due to script I think. from 2018, it was like JOL s1 (late 2017/early 2018) -> young blood s1 (? filmed mid 2018) -> DLDL s1 (filmed mid 2019) -> SSS (filmed mid 2020). So I assume he only started writing JoL s2 early or mid 2020, and if rumours for s3 is true, 2 season for a year and half is ok i guess. I sure hope the rumour is true.

Maybe they'll hand the SSS s2 script to someone else :P IF JoL S2&3 are filmed back to back, SSS s2 earliest would be 2022 Q4, enough time for a script if they start now.

yeah i counted the S+ they have left, there's only like 3? can't be more than 5? none of the S+ this year quite met the expectations, serves them right, idk what they were doing with some of the choices in drama productions. oh, except for you are my glory, that did pretty good, but it had help from game dept and other stuff.

They are doing it to extend the broadcast period + gain membership I think, it's also better for the tv ratings, but I don't think that's tencent's main concern.

tencent still have s+, mirror twin city! but it's for january or chinese new years lol. I heard liu yifei and chen xiao's drama is fighting for the slot too, but that drama doesn't have a license yet.