Chapter 437: The Smoke of the Internet Copyright War

January 2010, 2, New Year's Eve.

Liu Zhou got up early and ran on the treadmill for more than half an hour, then went to the restaurant for breakfast.

Boiled shrimp + oatmeal porridge + two vegetarian buns + eggs + fruit.

Having gained weight and become greasy after entering middle age in his previous life, Liu Zhou paid much more attention to diet and exercise in this life.

Liu Zhou started to develop the habit of exercising since his freshman year, so now that he is in his early thirties, he has managed his body very well and looks like he is only twenty-four or twenty-five years old.

With his handsome face, it is not an exaggeration to call him a young and handsome guy.

You should know that among Liu Zhou’s fans, there are also many fans who love good looks.

Therefore, when he attended some public events and stood with a group of middle-aged people, he stood out.

In fact, even if he didn't have such a handsome face, with the aura around Liu Zhou, he would still be the focus of everyone, but his good looks just added to the advantage.

As Zeng Li became pregnant again, the family's meals improved visibly as the elders on both sides were worried about the fetus's malnutrition.

So these days, Liu Zhou also ate a lot of delicious food.

However, just like when Zeng Li was pregnant with her first child, she ate too much and gained weight, and even felt sick to her stomach, so Liu Zhou specifically asked the chef at home to cook lighter dishes.

He couldn't control his mother and mother-in-law, and he didn't want to lose his interest in food again this time.

Fortunately, he will go out to film after the New Year and doesn't have to stay at home all the time like last time.

The chef at home was very skilled and Liu Zhou ate all the breakfast he prepared.

After breakfast, Liu Zhou changed his clothes and went to see his son Liu Yu.

Liu Yu was almost three years old and had always been with her mother. Later, Zeng Li started working again and the family hired a nanny.

As a father, Liu Zhou was often away from home for work, so it was inevitable that he was a little unfamiliar with him, but at least he would not say that he could not recognize him.

Looking at little Liu Yu who was still sleeping, Liu Zhou gently touched his little cheek and then left the room.

At the same time, Liu Zhou couldn't help but think of his other son Liu An in the Magic City.

Although he allowed the mother and son to return to China to settle down, Liu Zhou found that he still didn't have much time to spend with Zhang Tong and her son.

Not only Zhang Tong and the others, but he also spent relatively little time with Zeng Li and her son in the past two years.

The main reason is that he has been too busy in the past two years. He has been busy with the company's listing since the year before last, and then after the company went public, he started filming movies without stopping.

Moreover, they shot two films back-to-back, both of which were very time-consuming special effects blockbusters, and even "Aftershock" had not yet started shooting.

This was the first time that Liu Zhou had made himself so busy. In the past, even when he was making movies, he would only make one a year at most. This allowed him to work very comfortably and easily, unlike now when he is in such a hurry.

According to the original plan, Liu Zhou had to go to Hollywood to cooperate with Warner to make a movie, and he had already reached a verbal agreement with Warner.

However, after filming "Aftershock", Liu Zhou does not plan to film again this year. He needs to have a good rest.

Such non-stop filming is not only tiring, but also will kill Liu Zhou's interest in making movies. In any case, he has to rest for a while.

It was just after the filming of Aftershock, and Zeng Li should have been pregnant. He could accompany Zeng Li while watching the post-production of Interstellar and Aftershock, and at the same time handle the affairs of several of his companies.

It seems that even if Liu Zhou stops making movies, he can't stop, but at least he doesn't have to run around everywhere.

After coming out of his son's room, Liu Zhou saw Zeng Li was still sleeping so he didn't disturb her. He turned on the TV out of boredom.

As soon as I turned on the TV, I saw that Shonan TV was broadcasting the most popular TV series since the beginning of the year, "Snow Leopard".

This TV series is starred by Zhu Yawen, co-produced by Golden Harvest and Shonan TV, and became the opening drama of Shonan TV in 2010.

For three consecutive years, TV series produced by Golden Harvest have been CCTV's opening dramas of the year, but this year it stopped.

However, even if "Snow Leopard" did not have the investment from Shonan TV, it would be difficult for this drama to be broadcast on CCTV as the opening drama of the year.

Because CCTV's TV drama department had a task assigned by higher authorities, it specially produced a major drama.

Kang Honglei was the chief director of the TV series "The Founders", which tells the story of oil workers in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China.

However, the ratings of this TV series with a strong main theme are not very good. The highest rating is just over 1.1, and the average rating is only , almost falling below .

This also created the worst ratings record for CCTV's opening drama of the year.

On the contrary, "Snow Leopard" is still as popular as in the original time and space.

The original Snow Leopard Badge was very well acted, but it is undeniable that the script and production team of this drama are also excellent.

Zhu Yawen's acting skills may be slightly inferior to Wen Zhang's among the new generation, but he is also considered to be outstanding.

The role of Zhou Weiguo played by him is also very immersive, at least much better than that played by Zhang Ruoyun.

In addition, as the strongest satellite TV station under CCTV, Shonan TV also has a very large audience base, so the ratings of "Snow Leopard" on the first day exceeded 2.

The highest ratings were as high as 4.3, and the average ratings reached 2.8. In 2010, when a rating of over was considered excellent, the performance of "Snow Leopard" was undoubtedly a huge success.

The reason why "The Founder" is still considered bad even though its average viewership exceeded 1 is because this TV series was broadcast on the CCTV platform, and a viewership of over 1 can only be considered passing, not to mention that it is CCTV's opening drama of the year.

The comparison between the two makes "Snow Leopard" even more outstanding. The drama was also rated by the media as the best anti-Japanese war drama after "Drawing Sword".

At the same time, this also further demonstrates Golden Harvest's outstanding production capabilities in the field of TV dramas.

Seeing this situation, CCTV arranged for someone to contact Golden Harvest after the ratings of "The Founder" and "Snow Leopard" came out, hoping to book the big drama "The Legend of Zhen Huan".

Although "The Legend of Zhen Huan" has not been officially announced to the public, it is basically no secret to the industry.

Directed by the famous TV director Hu Mei, with an investment of nearly 100 million yuan, and with two of the most popular male and female artists in mainland China, Fan Xiaopang and Qin Hao, it is rumored that they will star in the lead roles, making "The Legend of Zhen Huan" exude the aura of a drama king.

"The Legend of Zhen Huan" has also become the most anticipated TV drama project from the second half of last year to now.

Therefore, not only are some artists in the circle trying every means to get a role in "The Legend of Zhen Huan", major domestic satellite TV stations have also been contacting Golden Harvest, hoping to get the first round of broadcasting rights for the drama in advance.

CCTV was more reserved before, but now that it has been confirmed that Fan Xiaopang and Qin Hao will really join "The Legend of Zhen Huan", and the failure of "The Founder", they have begun to take the initiative to contact Golden Harvest.

Speaking of it, the cooperation between Golden Harvest and CCTV has never disappointed them. The ratings of the TV series produced by Golden Harvest and broadcast on CCTV have never been bad.

Especially in the past two or three years, CCTV's opening dramas of the year were all TV series produced by Golden Harvest, which all achieved very good results. Last year's "Going West" even won the annual ratings championship.

After several years of operation, Golden Harvest's TV series have become a brand in the industry. But Liu Zhou is not that stupid. "Empresses in the Palace" is a hit among hits, so how could he sell the first round broadcast rights so early?

Although some TV stations offered attractive prices, Liu Zhou asked Zhang Zhao to reject them all.

The price of TV series has been rising in the past two years. It may be a bit exaggerated to say that the price changes every day, but when the entire TV series is completed and sold at the end of the year, it will definitely be sold at a much higher price than now.

The reason for this situation is that some satellite TV stations began to rise strongly, and CCTV and Xiangnan Satellite TV were no longer the only ones dominating the market. The competition among satellite TV stations also became fierce from this period.

At the same time, last year, in the second half of 2009, the online copyright protection policy for film and television dramas was officially implemented.

In other words, major video websites can no longer arbitrarily copy and paste previous TV series and movies onto their websites for playback as they did before.

This also led to a surge in the prices of online copyrights for film and television dramas.

The popular TV series "My Captain, My Regiment" earned only 2 yuan per episode on average, and the total copyright of the entire series was only around 80 yuan.

The previous "Golden Wedding" and "Soldier Assault" only made a few thousand yuan per episode on average, which was absolutely a bargain.

However, as the authorities began to regulate the online copyright of film and television dramas, some Internet giants have also begun to officially enter the field of video websites.

At the end of last year, Baidu announced that it would invest in and establish the video website iQiyi. Although Gong Yu was missing, it was clear that Baidu had not given up on this business.

At the same time, at the beginning of this year, Penguin Group also officially announced the launch of Penguin Video.

The successive entry of two of the most powerful Internet companies in the country into the video website industry immediately caused a stir in the industry.

Together with Sina Video, which is backed by Sina Group, and Sohu Video, which is backed by Sohu, four powerful Internet companies began to compete for copyright.

The video website field, which was originally dominated by Sina, Youku and Tudou, has suddenly become a battleground for many players.

However, Sina has the support of Sina Group, so it is not afraid of burning money. Youku and Tudou are currently independent and have no big capital backing. Also, because video websites have little revenue, they cannot afford to burn money in financing and can only seek to go public.

Tudou is currently progressing a little faster, but is being held back by its boss’ ex-wife. Youku is likely to catch up and become the first video website to go public.

But no matter what, after going public, the two companies will have more funds, and the copyright war is expected to be more intense than in the previous life.

In fact, even before these two companies went public, there were already signs of a copyright war.

Many popular dramas have increased their box office from tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands in the past two years to millions or even tens of millions.

For example, Qiong Yao's "New My Fair Princess" has just started filming, and not only are TV stations scrambling to get it, but major video sites are also getting in on the action.

In the end, "New My Fair Princess" was acquired by Sohu, and the entire drama cost 3000 million.

Later, Yu Zheng's "Palace 2" had a single episode cost 184 million, and the entire series cost more than 6000 million. Jia Jingwen's "The Secret History of Princess Taiping" had a single episode cost 200 million yuan, and the entire series cost 9000 million.

From 2009 to 2011, several video websites spent money like crazy in these three years.

In the end, each company suffered so much that they stopped one after another, but the price of online copyrights was completely driven up.

Of course, the most crucial thing is that almost all small and medium-sized video websites suffered losses in this copyright war, either shutting down or being acquired.

For the video websites, although they have wasted a lot of money, they have eliminated all potential competitors, and finally only a few of them are left, and it is their turn to make the rules.

So when only iQiyi, Youku and Tencent Video were left in the original time and space, strange operations such as advance on-demand viewing, SVIP, and even VIPs having to watch advertisements all came out.

Although Sina Video can sit back and relax because it acquired a large number of online copyrights of previous film and television dramas in advance, Liu Zhou is also ready to join this money-burning war.

It is not only to clean up those small and medium-sized video websites, but also because the newly released popular TV series will have more traffic.

In the past, those old TV dramas and movies were not designed to attract traffic, but to retain traffic.

Therefore, Sina will also participate in the competition for some newly released popular movies and TV series.

Sina Group has already prepared hundreds of millions of dollars for this purpose and does not even plan to distribute last year's profits as dividends.

However, compared with other companies, Sina Video has another huge advantage, which is that it has a sister company, Golden Harvest Group.

Sina Video can get priority access to TV series and movies produced by Golden Harvest Group.

Of course this cannot be free. After all, Sina and Golden Harvest are both listed companies, so they must be fair and just.

But as a sister company, there are certainly some discounts. However, the acquisition price of Sina Video cannot be lower than 90% of the market price or 85% of the highest price of other competitors. At the same time, various resources of Sina Video must be provided to Golden Harvest Group and artists first.

For example, the popular "Snow Leopard" at the beginning of the year, Sina Video bought it at a price of 20 per episode. This TV series has a total of episodes, which is million.

It may not seem like much, but on today's online video sites, it is considered a sky-high price.

……

Although Liu Zhou has higher standards now, he can still watch "Snow Leopard" when he has nothing to do.

"Snow Leopard" is a standard happy drama. In fact, almost all TV dramas that become popular are also happy dramas.

People watch TV series to relax and kill time. It is difficult to make TV series that are profound or literary to become popular.

Just like the "Ming Dynasty 1566" in the original time and space, the word of mouth was extremely good, but the ratings were very unsatisfactory.

TV dramas are actually similar to online novels, and almost all of the ones that become popular are refreshing novels.

Although "Snow Leopard" is a refreshing drama, at least the plot is not bloody and there are not too many low-intelligence plots. Many plots are arranged very smoothly and the conflicts are relatively reasonable.

In "Country Love 3", which was broadcast at the same time as "Snow Leopard", a group of people are in circles of love, dancing and acting, and misunderstandings go back and forth.

The story can be explained clearly in one sentence, but it is dragged out until the finale, and in order to create conflicts and conflicts, some characters are often made to be particularly disgusting.

It's okay to watch it for fun without thinking, but studying the plot a little bit can be a good remedy for lowering blood pressure.

In fact, it’s not just "Country Love 3", the whole series is similar, the plots are very bloody.

However, even such a melodramatic TV series had a very high viewership rating. More than ten episodes were filmed in total, and "Country Love" was still being filmed before Liu Zhou was reborn.

This can be regarded as the longest-running TV series in mainland China.

So Zhao Benshan is really amazing. He is very clear about the positioning of "Country Love" and has firmly grasped the potential audience.

Not only did he make a ton of money from this series of TV dramas, but he also made many of his apprentices famous.

(End of this chapter)