WK1

Do you notification about people who responded to my message?? Or notification that the rating has gone?

I did not get any notification that the rating has got up. I just happened to be here, minutes before the ratings went up. And was so surprised.

No. No evil 2nd leads at all.

Yes indeed. After TLB, I just follow Dilraba around. I want to watch the progression in her acting abilities. And this drama has the same director as TLB, so expectations are high that this will be a big hit next year, for both Dilraba and Allen Ren, the male lead.

You can see that if YAMG ends up with only 3B views in China, it will rank below so many other dramas. Whether a drama is considered a big success or not also depends on expectations. For example, the drama My Heroic Husband. No big stars. Yet, scored a very high viewership. Many actors from this drama acted in Joy of Life and fans from Joy of Life came to support this drama.

The Long Ballad has many big names, and Dilraba also acted in that drama, but did not do very well and performed below expectations. But, viewership has gone up since end of May. And it has moved up to Number 5, in Tecent's streaming platform.

YAMG has even bigger stars in Reba and YY, so expectations are very very high. If it ends only with around 3B, lots of people will be very disappointed. It must have at least 4B, to be considered meeting expectations.

Here is the list of all the top dramas in the 1st half of 2021. The Billion refers to number of viewership in China:
Douluo Continent - 5.446 billion
Legend of Fei - 5.408 billion
My Heroic Husband - 4.356 billion
The Sword and the Brocade - 4.79 billion
Rattan - 3.95 billion
You Are My Hero - 3.585 billion
The Long Ballad - less than 3 billion
The Rational Life - 2.43 billion
Word of Honor - 1.8 billion
My Best Friend’s Story - 1.6 billion

It took a while, but I finally figured out why they annouced the airing of TOOL so far in advance. Usually they announce it a week beforehand. Here, they did it 1 month ahead. This is intended to send a clear signal to fans of Reba and YY. If you wish to support YAMG, better do it fast, by next week, and not be complacent. Once TOOL starts, viewership for YAMG in China and elsewhere will drop

That is true. With China winning so many Gold medals, what happened in Weibo is hardly surprising. The Olympic medal count is their national pride. YAMG is just a drama. No match. The end result, of course less viewers for YAMG. This should change, once the Games end. YAMG should be everyone on Weibo, and viewers will come back to the drama again.

Very likely not, if you are referring to the airing this Sat. I think the Happy Camp people are helping YAMY, by rushing the airing out by this Sat, so that it will not clash with the closing ceremony of the Tokyo Games. Very likely they will not be able to do the English sub on time. But this is ok, because the primary market is China. Later on, they will do it. Just not sure when, tho

If 250M a day, we can hit 4B views when this series ends.

If you have been waiting for months and months, you fully deserve to smile.

For sure, next week will increae the popularity of YAMG. But I am not really sure how international fans will react to this drama, when this series is aired in Netflix, etc. besides all the streaming platforms. We may not be concerned about all the politics involved in the game, but foreign viewers may also not like too much of those aerospace stuff as well, since they know that this is Chinese propaganda.

Tencent tried to corner too many markets in China. The Chinese authorities went after them, the same way they went after Jack Ma and Alibaba. In the coming weeks and months, Tencent will continue to suffer. When they will recover, no one knows. We do not need to worry about all the big shareholders. They are already super rich. But, many of the small shareholders are suffering now.

For 2021, the benchmark comes from dramas already hit that number (namely Sword and Brocade and Douluo Continent). When they tabulate viewership number, they add up all the views from all the official viewing platforms in China for each of the dramas. They don't really care how many platforms each drama is shown on.

Trending heavily and all the other kind of stuff not really important to Tencent (the producer or broadcast rights owner of many of these web dramas). What matters most to Tecent is still viewership count in China.

All of the top dramas in China have great production, not just YAMG. And as far as advertisers are concerned, it is pretty obvious. The higher the viewership count, the higher the commercial value of a drama.

In terms of acting awards, it will be a different story. I think judges will look beyond viewership count. Reba did very well in TLB, and she did very well here in YAMG too. YY only has one drama in 2021. Not sure how will affect him when drama awards come around next year.

This also mean Tencent placed the wrong bet. They really betted on those excellent CGI used for the game. Cannot be helped. In business, you place bets all the time. No one can predict the future. If they could, they surely would have cut down those game scenes, save all the money, and just give more screen time to YY interacting with Reba in conversations, rather than so much playing Honor of Kings. They are the true stars of this drama, not those game scenes nor the aerospace scenes.

Recently, Tencent has been making lots of wrong bets. They better start making some good ones, or all their shareholders will be crying.

Yeah. I am fully of this. One article in China even described Honor of Kings as "spiritual opium." . The timing is all bad. First, the games in Japan. Then, all this crackdown on video games in China. I even think that the Chinese government is going after Tencent itself, not wanting it to be too big and out of control.

This is all bad news for both YY and Reba and everbody involved in this drama. When they signed up for YAMG 2 years back (I think), no way they will know that the Chinese government will go after Tencent or those video games.

In a way, all the cast members, etc. have already been paid for been involved in this drama. But it does mean that this drama is not going to help them to be more popular in China. Both YY and Reba will need to rely on their next drama to do the trick. In this regard, I have no fear for Reba. Those who have watched her in TLB, we know how well she can perform.

For YY, his track record in historical has not been all that great. Maybe the next one will change all that.

You know, the more I think about it, the more I feel that the airing time for TOOL is better than YAMG. Hunan is really smart. They waited for the games in Tokyo to be over, before airing TOOL.

But Tencent really has no choice but to air YAMG right now. They have so many dramas all waiting to air. So clashing with the Olympics was something they knew was unavoidable. They can only hope that YAMG will withstand the onslaught. To a great extent, it has. But, some damage has already been done.

Whether YAMG can recover fully is all in the hands of the episodes next week.

I have little doubt that XZ is your favourite. In China, he is certainly more popular than YY. Although Reba is more popular than YZ (just slightly ahead, I think), I think the combined stardom of XZ and YZ, is stronger than combined stardom of YY and Reba.

In theory, if Reba are YZ are equal, and XZ much stronger than YY, and both dramas are just as good, viewership of TOOL will outperform YAMG.

But truth be told, so far XZ has only excelled in historicals. His performance in modern dramas is an unknown. We will be able to tell, when TOOL is aired.

Right now, we just quietly support Reba and YY and wish for the best for YAMG.

How I only wish that is true, but this is not the case. This drama is indeed popular. But popular is a relative term. Being the top now, does not tell us the viewership number. And right now, viewership number seems to suggest that YAMG is only doing Ok, with 1.32B views. That is not a great number. If it has 2B views now, that is much better. We are short of about 600 plus million views, which is not an easy number to make up for, because the summer games are still going on in Japan.

So, we really need for next week to be a great week for YAMG. With competition from the Olympics gone, and all the happy episodes coming up, maybe those shortfall can be overcome.

I am aware. And, to be honest, I am fearing for the worse. Fans in China will not care about anything written or done here in MDL. I go the MDL page of TOOL, and you can see everyone there all hyped up for TOOL. They have been waiting for TOOL far far longer than anyone here have been waiting for YAMG.

But foreign viewers will not mean anything. The key factor how well TOOL will do depends totally on the drama itself and how well it will be received in China. If that one is big hit there, it will be rather difficult for YAMG to hit 4B views.

Anyway that is totally out of our control. We can only hope that the episodes next week are blockbusters. Let us hope that YT chasing after JJ, and their union will do the trick. Once the episodes next week are great, more viewers will watch the last few episodes. And that will bring us to 4B, and we will not need to worry about TOOL at all.

As a matter of fact, I suspect many 'neutrals' from here will be watching TOOL. I for one, will check out the first few episodes. If that one hits 200m views with its first episode, not difficult to predict where it will go.

The Oath of Love. You can check in MDL. The male lead and female lead are really big stars in China. As big, if not bigger than Reba and Yang Yang. Fans of this drama have been waiting for nearly 2 years. You can be sure that they will come out by the millions to support this drama, once it airs.

Thanks so much!! It should be evening time in China. Now, I am going to check if that episode clashes with the closing ceremony of the Olympics. If it clashes, the promotional value of that episode will be affected.

Edit: Closing ceremony is on 8 August. Happy Camp 7 August. Good news!!

Can anyone here recall off-hand, when will the Happy Camp episode be aired??