The Wind of China Entertainment 2005

Chapter 707: Encirclement and Suppression of PPS
A coffee shop in Zhaoyang CBD, Beijing.

Gu Yongqiang sat by the window, slowly stirring the black coffee on the table, looking out the window, with a myriad of thoughts in his mind.

As the founder of Youku, he led a group of investors to ring the bell on the New York Stock Exchange in December 2010, becoming the first Chinese video website to go public in the United States.

At that time, Youku’s market value was close to US$30 billion.

In August last year, Youku and Tudou officially merged by exchanging 8% of their shares.

He became president and chairman of the new company, and Wang Weize, the founder of Tudou.com, joined the board of directors.

After half a year at the helm of the new ship, Gu Yongqiang belatedly discovered a fact.

This merger is not a combination of the strong and the weak moving forward together, but a combination of the strong and the weak moving forward under a heavy burden, and he himself is the one bearing the heavy burden.

The competition among video websites has entered the era of competing for the copyrights of movies, TV shows and variety shows.

The three giants BAT have all entered the market, using the excuse of blood transfusion to lay out their own business ecosystems.

Baidu established iQiyi in 2010 and Tencent invested heavily in Tencent Video in the same year, and both rose rapidly.

In comparison, Alibaba's pace is slightly slower due to differences in its business model, but it has also made a number of large investments in the fields of film, television, music, etc. this year.

Under the shadow of long-term losses, the video industry is about to usher in a new round of fierce capital competition.

With capital coming in with great force, he has no idea where Youku is going and what its future will be like.

Perhaps Youku and Tudou should find a strong backer, such as Alibaba.

Thinking of Alibaba, Gu Yongqiang couldn't help but smile. He had interviewed Ma Yun in those days.

During his tenure at Sohu, Zhang Zhaoyang spared no expense in hiring a headhunting company in order to recruit top talent.

In 98, Ma Yun had just rejected the invitation from Yahoo China. Under the deception of a headhunting company, she accidentally came to Sohu, which was interviewing and recruiting.

At that time, eye protection Gu Yongqiang happened to be the interviewer, and Ma Yun said this when she left.

"I'm not here for an interview. I want to start my own company. In fact, you don't need to hire anyone else. You are very suitable for the position of COO."

Later, just as Ma Yun expected, his position in Sohu rose step by step.

In 04, he became the president of Sohu and concurrently served as the chief operating officer. However, two years later, in 2006, he submitted his resignation application to Zhang Zhaoyang and founded Youku.

"Boom boom boom!"

The sound of knocking on the table interrupted his thoughts.

Gu Yongqiang turned his head and saw that it was iQiyi CEO Gong Yu.

Gong Yu joined Sohu in 2003 and served as vice president, senior vice president and chief operating officer until he left Sohu in 2010 to co-found the video website iQiyi with Baidu.

The two were colleagues at Sohu and had a good relationship. Although they became competitors after leaving, they often communicated privately, occasionally having meals or drinking tea together.

Gong Yu sat down opposite.

"What are you thinking about?"

"Reminiscing about the past."

"cut."

Gu Yongqi's nose twitched as he stared at the person opposite him and asked with interest, "You seem to be smoking a lot more recently."

"Oh, don't mention it." Gong Yu waved his hands helplessly.

"After My Love from the Star was aired, I couldn't sleep well for more than half a month, and my smoking addiction naturally became stronger. Every day when I got home, my wife kept nagging me."

"Haha." Gu Yongqiang laughed heartily.

Many video website leaders, including him, are drooling with envy at the achievements of "My Love from the Star".

It is generally believed in the industry that the emergence of "My Love from the Star" not only broke the stereotype that "Chinese people are unwilling to spend money watching dramas", but also opened the era of content payment for long video websites.

The status of this drama in the domestic streaming industry is comparable to that of "House of Cards" to overseas streaming platforms such as Netflix.

Of course, there are also objections to this view in the industry.

Some people believe that "House of Cards" is a self-produced drama of Netflix. What does it mean by self-produced? It means that everything from the script, funding to the actors are dominated by the platform.

However, this is not the case with "My Love from the Star" starring Lu Yuan. In the eyes of many outsiders, the leading party of this drama is Yuanfang Media, not PPS.

But Gu Yongqiang is one of the few insiders who knows the relationship between Yuanfang Media and PPS.

Yuanfang Media and PPS have the same boss. The former focuses on content production, while the latter is responsible for content broadcasting, forming a closed loop of self-production and self-sales.

As a competitor, Gu Yongqiang also had to admit that the achievements of "My Love from the Star" were of extraordinary significance.

Prior to this, since Internet-produced dramas were not yet perfect in terms of plot, content, and production, online self-produced dramas have been suppressed by traditional satellite TV content and have been marginalized.

However, as a drama essentially produced by PPS, "My Love from the Star" has successfully achieved reverse sales from the online platform to TV stations.

This undoubtedly made many colleagues, including Gu Yongqiang, feel excited, and saw the dawn of online self-produced dramas surpassing traditional satellite TV content.

But while I was excited, I couldn't help feeling jealous.

"PPS is a weird thing. Its funding is not even comparable to Youku, but despite being sandwiched between Baidu and Tencent, it has become the video network with the largest number of paying users in China." Gu Yongqiang sighed.

Gong Yu heard the sarcasm in his words, put down the coffee in her hand, and retorted with a pout.

"Who is attacking him? Tencent is not focusing on video websites right now. As for iQiyi, My Love from the Star is an accident. Lu Yuan's appeal on the small screen and the number of fans he has are really unbeatable in the current market."

Gu Yongqiang smiled, but didn't comment. He asked, "Really? Then how do you explain "Soul Ferry"?"

"Uh." Gong Yu was speechless and fell silent.

If the success of "My Love from the Star" is attributed to Lu Yuan's huge appeal and the result of PPS spending hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing.

So, it was hard for him to accept that a horror film like "Soul Ferry" with a budget of less than 10 million yuan once again achieved great success in both word-of-mouth and data.

According to the battle report published by PPS.

On the night of its premiere, within 10 minutes of its release, Soul Ferry received 1500 million instant clicks on PPS, and then steadily increased at a rate of 100 million per hour.

The playback page was full of comments, with almost unanimous praise. Within 48 hours of its release, the video received over 8000 million hits, and within 72 hours, it received over million hits.

The ever-increasing number of views has also driven related topic effects and search popularity.

At 3: pm on the evening of the premiere, the topic #魂飘飘# ranked top on the Weibo topic rankings.

Less than 24 hours after it went online, the topic #魂飘飘# quickly ranked first on the TV drama topic list, second on the Weibo film and television hot search list, and fifth on the Weibo real-time hot search list.

Currently, the topic has been read 5789.1 million times and discussed 55 times.

As the subsequent episodes are gradually unlocked and the amount of discussion increases, there is no doubt that the topic of "Soul Ferry" will continue to heat up.

This result is naturally not comparable to that of "My Love from the Star", but "My Love from the Star" was invested with 80 million yuan and starred by Lu Yuan.

It is hard to imagine that "Soul Ferry" could achieve such results with a low cost of 800 million and no big names joining.

Netizens on Weibo have been flooding with praise for "Soul Ferry".

Then I heard Gu Yongqiang holding his phone and reading: "Oh my God, Soul Ferry is actually a movie with ghosts. It's unbelievable. The quality is completely better than all the bad domestic horror movies. It is not inferior to American dramas. Although the production cost is not high, the quality is not bad at all. Moreover, the plot is very Chinese in style, which attracts me more than American horror movies.

To be honest, each episode of Soul Ferry is an independent story that really captures my heart. Although this drama also secretly conveys realistic meanings and educational concepts, it is neither deliberate nor far-fetched. At least I don’t dislike it. Each story always touches me and occasionally makes me cry. Soul Ferry is beyond my imagination. I have to say that PPS’s vision is amazing! ! ”

"."

"Okay, you really have so much free time." Gong Yu interrupted unhappily and said stubbornly.

"I admit that this drama is successful, but it is just taking advantage of a market loophole and it doesn't prove anything."

Gu Yongqiang nodded, partially agreeing with his point of view.

The current streaming media market is still in a stage of wild growth in terms of content.

While TV dramas are strictly following various bans on subject matter, online self-produced dramas have a larger space for expression in areas such as the supernatural, police and gangsters, and eroticism.

There are relatively fewer shackles on the body.

Take "Soul Ferry" as an example. From the Hong Kong ghost films in the 7s and 80s to the recent Japanese and Korean ghost films, "ghost" themes are common on the big screen.

But in the field of TV dramas, apart from the repeated remakes of "Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio", there is an overall lack of novelty.

So far, domestic audiences have not been able to see a "ghost" drama set in modern society.

Therefore, the core of "Soul Ferry" is to promote the transmission of "positive energy" values ​​through "telling people through ghosts", while filling the gap in the subject matter of ghost dramas, so that the audience no longer has to watch boring "fake ghosts". It is hard not to be popular.

After thinking for a while, he said, "This is only one aspect. Have you ever thought that apart from the subject matter, PPS's own advantages are also obvious?"

"Tell me more about it."

"PPS is not the only one producing its own dramas. We have all tried it, especially LeTV, which has launched quite a few of its own dramas this year, such as "Northeast Stories" adapted from Kong Ergou's online novel of the same name, "Women's Help" directed by Jin Chen, the director of the movie "Warring States", and "Good Men in the Tang Dynasty", a time-travel drama. But the quality is not as good as PPS."

"On the other hand, let's not talk about the phenomenal My Love from the Star, let's take Soul Ferry for example. Although it is a web drama, the actors' acting skills and scenes are not inferior to those of TV dramas."

"what do you mean?"

"I think that essentially, our companies lack the genes for traditional film and television content production. We are an Internet company, but PPS is different. Lu Yuan is a real film and television person. He owns Yuanfang Media and secretly acquired Zhouyi Film and Television in the early years."

"After these years of development, they have a wealth of talent in all aspects of the film and television production process, including screenwriting, directing, costume design, editing, etc., and their control over content far exceeds ours."

Gong Yu narrowed his eyes, as if thinking about something. After a moment, he said, "In that case, how about we work together to do something?"

"What are you doing?" Gu Yongqiang asked in confusion.

"PPS has grown so fast that the number of paying users has exceeded 2015 million. According to our forecast for the domestic market, we originally expected this number of paying users to be reached at least by 2013, but we actually reached it in ."

"Moreover, PPS's current operating model does not care about profits at all. Coupled with the high profit share of 4.9 million yuan from "My Love from the Star", countless people in the industry are flocking to it."

"Didn't the "Hot Mom" ​​that we negotiated with Tencent some time ago turn to PPS? In the long run, the snowball will get bigger and bigger, and eventually PPS will form a siphon effect, and we will have nothing to do with it."

Gu Yongqiang shook his head, thinking that he was too pessimistic.

"It's not as exaggerated as you say. I admit that My Love from the Star is a phenomenal work, but there is only one Lu Yuan. He can't shoot a TV series every now and then. He will be very busy. It's unrealistic. There are not so many good scripts. The essence of streaming media is that content is king. It must be continuously output. PPS's lead is only temporary."

Gong Yu objected: "I think differently from you. In fact, I think that among the streaming companies currently on the market, you may be the first to fall behind."

"We, are falling behind?" Gu Yongqiang frowned.

After the merger of Youku and Tudou, although the development did not meet expectations, it still sits firmly at the top of the industry in terms of the number of users.

"It's you." Gong Yu glanced at him and continued.

"Alibaba has been very active recently. Not only has it launched the Tmall TV box, it has also been in contact with Wasu Media, which has an IPTV license, and content producer China Culture. Its intention is clear: it wants to open up the entire cultural industry chain."

"So it's only a matter of time before they enter the long video field. According to Alibaba's style and the current industry situation, it is likely that they will acquire a streaming media company to quickly expand their market share. If you were Ma Yun, which one would you choose? IQiyi, Tencent Video, Sohu, and LeTV are all unlikely. The only ones left are Youku Tudou and PPS."

Gu Yongqiang's heart tightened, Gong Yu's words made sense.

Although Youku Tudou has a huge number of users, its disadvantages are also obvious.

When the family knows their own business, what Youku Tudou really needs now, in addition to high-quality content, is a content distribution channel, that is, a TV box or the like.

These Alibaba can provide.

In contrast, PPS's cooperation with Blueprint and Shanghai SMG Group has given them a clear advantage in content distribution channels and copyright storage.

If he were Ma Yun, there is no doubt that he would give priority to investing in PPS.

Once this happens, a three-way fight among BAT will be inevitable, and Youku Tudou, which has no backing, will most likely lose in this fight.

Therefore, for the future of Youku, it has become imperative to join forces with iQiyi to attack PPS.

PPS stood in his way.

Gu Yongqiang already had a plan in mind and was about to nod in agreement, but suddenly remembered something and asked, "Do you want to inform Tencent?"

"Right now, their minds are all on a mobile game." Gong Yu shook his head.

"Which one?"

“The game that was made popular by My Love from the Star is called League of Legends!”

(End of this chapter)