Chinese TV boldly goes exploring new markets
Chinese TV drama productions are enjoying major success and ever-growing popularity in Asian and African markets, according to leading industry executives and insiders.
That's since several path-finding series, including Nirvana in Fire and Legend of Lu Zhen, gained huge followings in Japan and South Korea. They've been joined by series like Beautiful Daughter-in-Law and Romance of Our Parents, which have received warm welcomes in Kenya and Egypt.
Now, the industry is conquering a new and potential watershed market.
Top entertainment streaming sites in the United States are now extremely interested in Chinese content and are in talks with Chinese companies about distribution deals, said You Xiaogang, head of the Chinese Television Drama Production Industry Association.
Leading US internet broadcast platform Netflix announced that it acquired Chinese detective series Night and Day in late 2017 and plans to make it available in its global markets spanning more than 190 countries and regions.
The 32-episode series, produced and released by Youku, a major online video portal owned by the internet giant Alibaba, centers on the efforts of twin brothers clearing the younger of the two on charges of murdering a family of five.
Netflix also bought the copyright to three other blockbusters - Tientsin Mystic, Burning Ice and Chosen. All of them are produced by another major video-streaming website iQiyi. Chosen, for example, was first released on iQiyi on Jan 7. It was adapted from a US TV series of the same title, which was first screened in 2013.
Entertainment industry pundits say that although the quality of Chinese dramas has risen greatly over the past five years, competitiveness in overseas markets still lags behind that of the US, Japanese and South Korean productions.
In 2016, Chinese broadcasters paid nearly 2.1 billion yuan ($326.35 million) to import TV series, but exports only earned 369 million yuan.
In addition to the small scale of exports, the diverse number of marketing channels is cited as another key reason for the much lower prices achieved by exported Chinese TV series, said Zhao Yifang, president of Zhejiang Huace Film and TV Co.
To help solve the problem, 10 Chinese film and TV studios, including Huace Film and TV, established an alliance during the 2017 China Film Television Art Innovation Summit held on Dec 25 in Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang province.
The Chinese TV Drama (Web Series) Export Alliance will cooperate with Netflix, Hulu and Amazon to set up a chargeable Chinese TV series broadcast website. Zhao said one of the goals of the alliance was to achieve a tenfold growth in the export prices of Chinese TV productions.
Statistics from the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television showed that China so far has translated more than 1,600 domestic movies and television productions into 36 languages - including English, French, Russian, Spanish, Arabic and Portuguese - and they are being aired in more than 100 countries.
(China Daily 01/18/2018 page17)
