text|Wei Hang
At 9 o'clock on April 15, the final season of Game of Thrones ushered in the first episode.
According to statistics, Game of Thrones has been on the air for 7 years and has won the Emmy Award three times. Before the return of
in the eighth season, Game of Thrones has won a record 47 Emmy Awards, and the status of the "number one American TV drama" is quite solid.
Game of Thrones is so successful, mainly because the HBO company behind it has the capital to play and can make money.
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Unlike other manufacturers, HBO has established a business model that mainly relies on subscriber fees to maintain operations and does not include advertising in programs.
More than 80% of HBO's revenue comes from cable subscription fees, and cable subscribers are the mainstream consumer market for HBO. The
business model that does not rely on advertising has brought obvious benefits to HBO.
only needs to run one's own program, do not have to bow to advertisers and ratings.
In other words, HBO does not need to pursue high ratings and caters to advertisers.
They just need to work hard to attract new subscribers and rack their brains.
HBO management is most interested in the indicator, which is the preference of different types of subscribers in the "Overall Subscriber Satisfaction".
Starting from "overall subscriber satisfaction", HBO has inadvertently established an audience-oriented communication philosophy, and has also laid a correct conceptual foundation for its great success in the future.
HBO has a unique position in American pay TV, creating such a very simple but efficient operation mode.
HBO provides high-quality paid programs, and other cable operators provide users with access services, and the promotion cost and revenue are shared between the two. When
was launched, HBO did not have original programs or channel resources.
After they bought the film sources from the program market, they assembled them into themed channels, and then sent them to users through the cable TV network.
HBO has multiple themed movie channels, which also helps it make more reasonable use of film sources.
A movie can be classified into different categories of theme channels from different angles. HBO charges for each channel, and the charging methods are also various.
users can purchase the viewing rights of each channel separately, or they can buy several channels together. If it is a combination of several channels, they will often get package discounts.
After users hand over the viewing fee to the cable operator, they are then divided into the content operator HBO according to the agreement. The content operator then uses a large amount of funds to purchase exclusive film sources to attract more new subscribers.
Since the early 1980s, HBO began to produce its own programs.
In 1983, HBO launched its first film "Terry Fox Story".
Since then, HBO began to produce low-cost TV movies at a rate of one month.
In the 1990s, the stable supply of movie programs could no longer enable HBO to withstand the impact of the video rental industry and the pay-per-view channel model, and the trend of slowing subscriber growth has emerged-at that time, HBO increased the number of subscribers each year by one million about.
So HBO formulated a new development strategy-relying on popular dramas to make itself a subscriber "frequently used" service.
HBO’s "The Sopranos", "Sex and the City", "Brothers" and other series have become the most popular dramas in the history of American television. The concept of "HBO production" is becoming a "avant-garde" and "high quality". Famous brand.
From 2013 to 2015, HBO's investment in program production accounted for 35.8%, 36.4%, and 36.2% of total revenue, respectively. In 2015, HBO's investment in program production exceeded US$2 billion.
The Best or Nothing, this sentence perfectly describes the general mentality of practitioners in the American art industry. Because of this belief, the works they have made have been unique for decades. Produced by
HBO, it must be a boutique.
Game of Thrones is super money-burning, which ensures the reliability of its hardware.
The average construction cost of American TV series is oneThe set is US$2 million, and the construction cost of each episode of "Game of Thrones" is as high as US$6 million in the first season, making it the most money-burning series in the history of TV dramas.
HBO has 114 million subscribers worldwide, and they spend an average of US$7.27 per month.
do a simple arithmetic problem, 114 million * 7.27 US dollars * 12 months = 9.945 billion US dollars / year, a season of ice and fire will only be eleven episodes, a maximum of 6 million episodes, the total is 66 million, not an order of magnitude of. Comparing
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with foreign countries, there are many "Game of Thrones" IPs in China.
For example, Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Fengshen Bang have been recognized by the audience and tested by the market.
However, in recent years, "Zhen Huan", "Ruyi's Biography", "Yanxi Palace Strategy" and other Gongdou dramas have only made use of the historical background and have not produced grand narrative TV dramas.
In terms of broadcast themes, urban emotions and family themes still accounted for the largest proportion of the top 30 CCTV ratings in 2018. The number of
costume dramas broadcast continues to be controlled, and the overall performance of TV channels in 2018 is sluggish. The first important factor of
is the script. It is conservatively estimated that it will take ten years for
to write a script like "Game of Thrones" to shoot. A length like
tests the author's writing ability, because the longer the length, the more story lines need to be designed for the characters.
Due to lack of inspiration in the long-form author, the whole drama may collapse.
Even if the investment and broadcasting methods of American TV series are completely followed in China, producers must consider whether to spend huge sums of money in such a drama.
also needs to consider the audience problem of film and television works brought about by novels.
The writing technique of "Three-Body" is relatively easy, and it took nearly ten years from the first writing to the stable fan base of "Three-Body" to negotiating the script and shooting.
Adventure novels are easier to write, but the commercialization of novels still takes time. For example, it took several years for "Tomb Raiders Notes" to be published and filmed on TV.
Another issue is the cost of shooting.
Game of Thrones has 583 members at most, and the production budget for each season is more than 60 million U.S. dollars (the average investment in one episode is about 6 million U.S. dollars), which does not include the up to 15 million U.S. dollars in promotional expenses per season.
Although China's TV dramas have gradually increased their investment in special effects, the effect is mediocre.
In 2018, five TV dramas in the costume TV drama market invested more than 500 million yuan, but they all lost money.
’s newly broadcasted Legend of the Conferred God claims to have invested 3 billion yuan, but the ratings of word of mouth are both Waterloo.
ruining the classics is most people's evaluation of this drama. After shooting
for so many years, Chinese creative people are still hesitating on original IP such as Journey to the West, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, not to mention the repeated remake of Jin Yong's martial arts.
Finally, China’s pay TV started late. At present, there are about 55.59 million paid subscribers to digital TV, accounting for about 30% of the pay.
In terms of payment rate, the current payment rate in the United States is about 43%, and China is only one-third of that of the United States.
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is similar to HBO. At first, Netflix was mainly engaged in DVD rental business. Later, with the development of emerging media, in 2007, it formally transformed into the online video operation business and became the leader in the field of online TV.
Netflix began to expand overseas markets in 2010, and the number of overseas users currently exceeds that of domestic users in the United States. It is worth noting that Netflix is not only second to none in terms of number of overseas markets and user scale, but also in terms of market competitiveness.
Regardless of the English-speaking countries, taking Spain, Mexico and Brazil as examples, according to 2018 data, more than 85% of the original movies watched by viewers in Spain, Mexico and Brazil on online video-on-demand platforms are from the United States. Flying company.
ranked first in the Spanish online original TV series on-demand rankings in 2017. The TV series "Stranger Things" produced by Netflix ranked first, with 13.7 million on-demand views;
Netflix's other original drama "Drug Lords" ranked first second.
Brazil is a major film and television country in Latin America, but in Brazil's 2018 online original TV series on-demand list, the TV series "Stranger Things" produced by Netflix topped the list with 46.5 million on-demand times.
Since 2013, Netflix's budget investment for original content production has increased year by year. In 2018, the budget for original program production was as high as 8 billion US dollars. In contrast, China's TV dramas are unable to do so.
In 2016, nearly 230,000 TV series were produced and broadcast in China, and 2,427 foreign TV series were imported and broadcast. The amount of introduction is far greater than the output. The overall situation of TV series trade "deficit" has not been profoundly changed.
Differentiated cultural competition is a key factor in the popularity or cold reception of Chinese TV dramas abroad.
The success and failure of Chinese TV dramas also depend on the "exclusive" products of Chinese culture such as costume dramas and fairy tales. The themes of these cultural products are becoming more and more homogeneous, and it can be said that Chinese TV dramas have a long way to go. .
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