The atmosphere of the New Year's Eve is getting stronger, and it is time for the year to take stock. "Recovery" and "peak" constitute the two key words of the 2023 drama market. Since the industry advocated reducing costs and increasing efficiency, the market has been significantly affected by the new style of creation, and has gradually moved towards a rational maturity period driven by quality. At the beginning of the year, "Hurricane" and "Three-Body Problem" made a hot debut, and "The Long Season" led with high scores;In the summer, the long-tail effect of "Lotus Building" continued, and "Sauvignon Blanc" achieved a phenomenal breakthrough;At the end of the year, the Hong Kong theater of "The News Queen" was attacked, and the ancient puppets of "Yi Nian Guan Mountain" exceeded 10,000, and the aftermath of the discussion continued to spread ......Whether it is the type of drama or the content topic, the 2023 drama market is remarkable. 
Reducing quantity and improving quality, expanding new themes, and industrial linkage, in the differentiated drama production pattern, we can get a glimpse of the market's determination to seek innovation and change from multiple dimensions, and we can also see more works echoing "long-termism". In addition to the excitement, the strategies and trends hidden in the data are worth analyzing. The quantity reduction is obvious, the quality and efficiency are obvious.
The hot drama sings the main theme of "recovery".
According to the latest "2023 Drama Market Report" released by Lighthouse Professional Edition, the number of domestic TV dramas in 2023 will show a slight downward trend, with a total of 294 releases, a decrease of 10 compared with 329 in 20226%。At the same time, the feature film ** index has improved compared to last year, achieving contrarian growth despite the decrease in the number of projects.
Remove the coarse and refined, improve the quality and reduce the quantity, the two constitute the main theme of this year's drama market, and are intuitively reflected in the number of "more than 10,000" dramas of Aiyouteng's three "breaking 10,000". 
Source: Lighthouse Professional Edition) iQiyi, a total of five films have achieved more than 10,000 popularity in the station this year, namely "Hurricane", "Changfeng Crossing", "Lotus Tower", "Ning An Like a Dream" and "Yi Nian Guan Mountain".The base number is the same as last year, but it is clearly stronger in terms of membership revenue and user growth。For example, in the first quarter, "Hurricane" attracted nearly 17 million new members, and contributed to iQiyi's Q1 total revenue and membership service revenue to achieve the best performance in history. And the other three except "Hurricane" and "Lotus Tower" are allThe head effect is obvious, and the ancient puppet theme of passers-by is considerable, respectively in the second half of the year at different periods to hand over a wealth of answers. The ancient costume is light, the soul is reborn, the "85 flowers" are out of the mountain, and the three ancient puppets each hold an advantage card. Driven by high-quality original content, the iQIYI platform will turn around its losses in 2023 and usher in a performance inflection point, and the market will respond enthusiastically, basically realizing a positive feedback loop. In terms of Youku, a total of 11 popular dramas have been produced this year, namely "Youth Song Xing", "Stars Fall into Sugar", "Who Is He", "Long Moon Embers", "Hou Lang", "Protecting the Heart", "Secretly Can't Hide", "The Day of Chasing the Light", "An Le Biography", "Under the Alien", "South Wind Knows My Mind", there are four increases in the number of last year, andThe subject matter is more widely distributed。It is worth mentioning that there is no shortage of writing with niche themes in the eleven dramas that break 10,000 thousands. Martial arts, comics, blood, youth campus ......They illustrate another trend in the creation of dramas:Vertical boutiques are also an important layout idea for multi-point capture
Looking at Tencent again, there are mainly three dramas that break "30,000" on the site, namely "The Sea in My Dreams", "Sauvignon Blanc" and "Good Things Come in Pairs", which has increased in number compared with last year. Among them, the period drama "The Sea in My Dreams" arrived to a wide audience with the empowerment of actors, "Sauvignon Blanc" narrated the "1v4" love myth, which successfully ignited the popularity of chasing dramas this summer, and "Good Things Come in Pairs" is an urban theme that looks at reality, and topics such as tearing scumbags and women helping each other frequently hit the audience's cool point. Overall, Tencent's driving force for going out of the circle this year is not only limited to the writing of the costume paradigm, especially the high feedback of "Dream Sea", which has been seen by the marketPeriod dramas are more likely in terms of creative path and communication effect
The three major platforms are racing, and the standards for "hot models" are different, but there is no doubt that the market is picking up. Member revenue, completion rate, business value represented by member recruitment, social media performance fed back by retrieving interactive behaviors, and user reputation gradually built up by content texture are all important factors for the platform to measure popular dramas.
From the perspective of review, whether it is the number of popular dramas or the communication effect, 2023 will show signs of recovery and steadily enter the track of high-quality development. "Small but Beautiful" vs Head Production.
There are dark horse surprise attacks, and there is also a low tide of traffic.
In 2023, in the context of the industry's "reduced development" and reduced content costs, two creative trends will gradually become clear:First, the head effect is significant, and the phenomenon of extensive and follow-the-trend creation is reducedThe second is that the "small but beautiful" style has been continuously attacked, and it has gradually become a test track favored by the platform. These two points can be glimpsed from the Douban high-score list. 
Source: Lighthouse Professional Edition) There are 23 works that have scored more than eight points on Douban this year, and "The Long Season" is the only work with more than 9 points. In addition, many dramas such as "The Three-Body Problem", "Going to a Windy Place" and "Ancient Acacia" are on the list. From the perspective of genre, suspense crime themes are still popular with high scores, and due to the time lag of word-of-mouth accumulation, they often have a certain "long-term effect". "The Long Season" has a strong "spicy" watermark, which is another aesthetic masterpiece after "The Hidden Corner";"Under the Prosperous City" and "Lotus Tower" write detective stories in ancient scenes;"*Thirteen Years", "*Mission" and "Hurricane" combine elements of national security, gang-related crimes, and criminal investigation, and weave the plot with staggered clues, as well as "The Silk Case of Daming under the Microscope", "Who Is He", "Echo", "Huanyan" and so on. This year's premiere platform for suspense dramas is still dominated by the Internet, and there is a trend of exploring long narratives。The single episodes of "The Long Season" and "Moses on the Plains" are not less than one hour long, and nearly 900,000 people on Douban gave the former a 9The high score of 4 also confirms the audience's tendency to pay for well-made and logical narratives. 
At the same time, the inclusion of "Ancient Lovesickness", "I Have a Friend" and "Broken Things Elite 2" on the list reflectsThe "Small but Beautiful" drama has received high recognition in the market。Such works often do not have large-scale investment and platform endorsement, and cannot accumulate traffic and popularity in a short period of time, butIn the "tap water" social media Amway, it gradually relies on quality to break the circle, and it often has a certain "author" characteristics。Zhizhu, the director of "Ancient Acacia", has attracted a certain number of fans with works such as "Donglan Snow" and "The Eldest Princess is Up". Wei Zheng, the director of "Broken Things Elite 2", continued the style of "Love Apartment", and together with Li Jiahang and other actors, successfully empowered fans to migrate. and "Director Bi" Bi Xinye once directed the series "Together in the Window". Including "When I Fly to You" directed by Cat's Tree, although it did not hit 8 points, it became Youku's highest-sharing drama in 2023 with a box office of 60 million. 
On the list, suspense detectives have played steadily, sitcoms have rejuvenated their vitality, and the urban industry has begun to emergeOutside the list, the "big production + big investment + traffic" dramas based on ancient puppets and current puppets are not satisfactory. As the largest theme category of passers-by,The ancient puppets and the current puppets are still in the first place, leading in performance, and the volume and quantity flow are not lost, but there are few peaks。The drama party is looking for breakthroughs from different angles in order to make differences in the content form. Let's look at the ancient puppets first. "Long Moon Embers" fired the first shot of ancient puppets in the first half of the year, and Dunhuang-style costumes and "Huanmen" formed a topic point that was widely out of the circle;"Changfeng Crossing" and "Sauvignon Blanc" staggered peaks and gatherings during the summer vacation, and many ancient puppets such as "Jade Bone Yao", "Seven O'clock Auspicious" and "Cloud Feather" were released in the same periodAt the end of the year, "Ning An Like a Dream" was airborne, and was later taken over by "Yi Nian Guan Mountain". 
Rebirth, Otome, Double Strong, Play, each has its own highlights,This year's online development has also been expanded from Jinjiang to another IP bonanza, Zhihu, representing the renewal and exploration of ancient puppets on the content side
But the clear trend reflected in 2023 is,Traffic actors are no longer the panacea for popular dramas, and the audience who jumped out of the "superstition of control and commentary" and "kiss scene trap" used a magnifying glass to screen the quality of the drama。Whether it is the casting discussion triggered by the male protagonist of "Yi Nian Guan Mountain", or the ending setting of "Cool Drama is Not Happy" in "For Dark Fragrance", it is revealed that there is still room for breakthroughs in the production of ancient puppets. Let's look at the current couple. Love, as a rigid demand in the female-dominated content market, has never lacked depictions of image language, but this year's word-of-mouth performance is not satisfactory. From "Homecoming", "Can't Hide Secretly", "Twilight Heart", to "I Want to Go Against the Wind", "Love as the Camp", "The South Wind Knows My Mind", "I Miss You Very Much", under the turbulent layout, only a few episodes have both popularity and word-of-mouth. Among them, only two films, "Love Only" and "Apocalypse", were on the Douban eight-point list, and "Can't Hide Secretly" was shortlisted for the top 10 of the average index of the lighthouse。On the whole, in terms of word-of-mouth and drama broadcast effect, there has been a certain degree of decline。In particular, "Fireworks in My World" caused plot controversy, and the expectation gap of "Love as a Camp" was too large, and it successively won Douban 28 and 4A score of 3 points. 
There are dark horse surprise attacks, and there is also a low tide of traffic.
In 2023, the current puppets that have always been hot have failed to create ratings myths, and the ancient puppets that frequently hit the list have also fallen into a strange circle where word-of-mouth traffic is difficult to achieve, but the suspense theme has gradually stabilized and matured, and the cutting-edge original has succeeded in making a small profit.
How to gather head resources to transform creative ideas, and how to regain the audience's confidence in idol love narratives are problems that the industry urgently needs to solve. Rich themes are in full bloom.
In addition to the high-score suspense and two stable **, this year's drama market is also thereFocus on innovationOn the way, a variety of rich solutions have been developed. First of allAn innovative expression of the main theme。As a traditional track and a rigid theme, this year's main theme drama mainly revolvesRevolutionary history and rural revitalization and other major national strategiesUnfold. Among them, "Ask the Boundless", "Kunpeng Hitting the Waves" and "The Flame of the Avenue" are gifts for great men, and future generations are judged by the mirror of the eventful years;"Ice and Snow Sharp Knife Company" commemorates the great victory of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, with strength and warmth;There are also "Fuchun Mountain Residence" and "Love in the Green Mountains and Green Waters" to write about the great changes in the countryside and reproduce the beautiful vision of Chinese-style modernization. 
Secondly, as reality-themed works have gradually become mainstream, a large number of film and television dramas tell stories "three feet above the ground".Period dramas, industry dramas and women's themesThe performance is particularly prominent. According to China Audiovisual Big Data (CVB), in 2023, the three dramas "Hurricane", "Our Days" and "The Road of Life" will all have a CCTV rating of more than 2%, successfully breaking the circle. "The Glory of the Fathers" won 8 on Douban3 high scores, the popularity of "The Sea in My Dreams" on Tencent exceeded 30,000, and the "idolization" of period dramas allowed value concepts such as "home-country isomorphism" to reach more young audiences. Forestry Reform, Beijing Youth, Railway DevelopmentContinuing the story weaving logic of "carrying the grand era with individual stories", this year's period drama has been renovated in terms of characters, backgrounds, and themes
In terms of industry dramas,In addition to traditional medical and legal themes, industry dramas have also expanded to many industries such as finance, fire protection, and science and technology, tell the story of the industry that is active and energetic, and create a colorful workplace group portrait. For example, the medical-themed "Asking Heart", "Extraordinary Doctor", "White Castle" and "Welcome to McNugget Village" have their own characteristics, "Ordinary Road" and "Fearless" follow the classic legal theme, "* Mission", "Undercover Police Flower" and "Public Prosecution" focus on the characteristics of the "public procuratorate and law" industry, and the characters of "He Came in the Firelight" and "Illuminate You" combine fire fighting elements and so on. or supplemented by the attached beauty of the emotional line, or combined with the suspense temperament, or ** life flow, industry drama this yearConstantly expanding the richness of the elements and focusing on professional rigor, and finally achieved good broadcast results. "Asking the Heart" won a Douban score of 84, "Who is he" CCTV8 has led the ratings in many times, and the exploration has achieved remarkable results.
Let's look at the flow of life and the narrative of women. The national drama market in 2023,The number of women's stories is still considerable, and the subjects depicted are more diverse and subdivided. "Grandma's New World" focuses on elderly women, reflecting the microcosm of the lives of neglected silver-haired women through "Grandma Runaway". "Imperfect Victims" and "Nine Righteous People" are actually the stories of female victimization in different eras, highlighting the brave power of women to help each other, including "Good Things Come in Pairs" is also the same underlying logic. "Dragon City" uses the portrayal of "paranoid" images to issue complaints against women under unfair treatment. More sensitive, sharper, and more delicate, this year's women's stories have slowly faded away from the refreshing narrative of the face, but more vividly and heartily revealed the current predicament of women's survival. The audience projects their own shadows on the protagonist, and completes the emotional resonance in the interweaving of laughter and tears. Although the episode is not entirely perfect, we see that "they" are boldly moving forward.
In the end, the most eye-catching thing is the excellent answer sheet handed over by niche themes. The themes of science fiction, comics, and martial arts have been exerted extraordinarily, and have become new highlights of the innovation track. At the beginning of the year, "The Three-Body Problem" broke the circle with China's science fiction hardcore, which greatly boosted the market's confidence in science fiction dramas. At the same time, live-action comics have been frequently released, and "Under the Stranger" has a score of 8 on Douban1, set a record for the highest score of a comic drama, and the Douban score of "Youth Song Xing" rose to 83. The long-tail effect is significant. There are also "The Legend of Magpie Knife Gate" and "Lotus Tower" that choose martial arts as the landing point, which are combined with comedy and detective respectively, and have run out one after another. A high score of 5. Moving forward steadily, determined to open up, each with its own beauty, the national drama market in 2023 will be based on the original themeI listened to the voices of more "circles", and also explored the way of creation of genre open source
As the viewing circle becomes more and more finely differentiated, it may be difficult to have a "all-you-eat" drama that becomes a hit in the industry. Only by telling realistic stories well and excavating novel perspectives can we broaden the infinite possibilities for the development of national dramas.
Integration and linkage of industrial chains and roads.
The content marketing model innovates the content as the benchmark, promotes the rope, and thus implicates the tripartite relationship between people, dramas and places. In 2023, "one drama brings fire to one city" has become a cross-border integration trend of film and television to help cultural tourism, and the linkage between inside and outside the industry will not stop. For example, "Going to a Windy Place" was filmed in Dali, Yunnan, and fed the local cultural tourism with film and television dividends;Jiangmen, the filming location of "Hurricane", the revenue of May Day increased nearly twice year-on-year;"Long Moon Embers" dreamily linked to the statue of Bengbu, and "Mulberry Wine in the Night" drove the tourism fever of Bengbu;There is also "I miss you very much" interspersed with the beautiful food scenery of Guilin Yangshuo in the play, which efficiently drains traffic and opens up new opportunities for industrial development. From unintentional coincidences to spontaneous "co-branding", film and television dramas in 2023 will shoulder more social value in addition to aesthetic and entertainment properties. The "Windy Courtyard" extends the core of rural revitalization to reality. Thus extending to the lives of the people;The repeated nominations of the crispy duck in "Can't Hide Secretly" finally blew the wind of punching in to Xiamen. And this trend of traffic conversion will continue to the creation of film and television dramas in the future.
At the same time, another linkage phenomenon is also manifested in the internal content of film and television. In this year's drama announcement, there is no shortage of new and interesting innovative gameplayCross-category, serialization, and full-link integration and linkage with IP as the carrier are becoming more and more frequent。"1 Million Promises" focuses on crew team buildingIn the form of the main creator of the hot drama fulfilling the wishes of fans, the drama series linkage is realized, "Ning An Like a Dream" and "Seven O'clock Auspicious" all achieved real-time drama traffic conversion through relevant special episodes. "Da Song Juvenile Chronicles" combined with two micro variety shows of "Team Building, Qizhai" and "Da Song Detective Bureau" to realize the reunion of the Qizhai team and complete the long-tail after-sales service with customized group comprehensives. The reunion star held a theme concert, is the promotion method of the two summer hot dramas "Lotus Building" and "Sauvignon Blanc". According to data, as of the end of "Lotus Building", the sales volume of its derivatives exceeded 5 million yuan, and there were nearly ten derivative IP licensors. The concert ticket sales model bound to platform members has brought considerable income to iQiyiWhile strengthening the thinking of members, it also prolongs the vitality of the series
In 2023, after the film and television winter, the drama market has basically stabilized the fundamentals of industrial development, and many ** platforms have also successfully achieved multi-quarter profits by reducing costs and increasing efficiency.
On the whole, there are determined to open up and boldly seek change, and there are also stable and victorious, positive and enterprising;There are head boutiques taking the lead, and there are also "small and beautiful" works that surprise with the appearance of dark horses;There is the integration of the industrial chain and the road, as well as the publicity and distribution techniques. It is undeniable that how to expand new growth space and solve the problem of difficult starting from niche themes still needs to be explored, but in any case, 2023 will become a powerful centering agent.