New Shanghai TV Drama Alliance
The Shanghai Media Group (SMG) launched a new initiative designed to bring back the glory days when Shanghai TV dramas dominated the market on November 24. More than 80 Shanghai-based production companies gathered at SMG headquarters to learn how the new Shanghai TV Drama Producer and Broadcaster Alliance plans to rejuvenate the local TV drama industry.
The TV drama industry in Shanghai has been eclipsed by Beijing in recent years. Shanghai studios today produce around 1,500 TV drama episodes every year, while Beijing studios produce around 6,000 episodes. Their market share has fallen from around 50% to around 10% of the total annual production.
Yang Wenhong, director of SMG's Film & TV Drama Center, said the Alliance plans to boost the local industry by creating new models for cooperation between broadcasters and producers. The Alliance aims to spread the costs and risks involved in TV drama production, providing broadcasters with a reliable supply of high quality drama series in the process. Alliance members will work together to produce TV dramas from start to end, sharing investment costs and production inputs via a process similar to the cooperation models popular in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. In return for their investment, broadcasters will have exclusive rights to at least the first broadcast of the series.
SMG member Dragon TV has already commissioned Shanghai Zhanjie Culture Company to tailor-make a new drama series under the new cooperation model proposed by the Alliance. The TV drama, The Promotion of Dulala, will target white collar workers as its primary audience.
"SMG will play a very different role to a normal purchaser during the production process," said Zhou Lin, head of Shanghai Zhanjie Culture. "Dragon TV staff will work together with us to create the show from beginning to end, from writing the screenplay and selecting key staff to actual production. Both organizations will contribute to investment and distribution, sharing both the profits and the risks. This gives us, as the producer, a lot more confidence."
The TV drama production industry in China has long been stymied by sub-standard contracts, which create loopholes that can be exploited by the crew, cast, script-writers and broadcasters at every step of the process. Over the course of production, the cast frequently change the script, locations change randomly and broadcasters often refuse to pay the full price for the resulting drama. The Alliance hopes to eradicate this problem by creating a standard contract for cooperation between producers and broadcasters.
By forging a closer cooperation between broadcasters and producers, the Alliance also hopes to ensure TV stations have a steady supply of quality TV dramas to fit their programming goals. TV drama production declined from around July this year as production equipment, talent and permits were locked up for the Olympics. As reported in last week's China Media Monitor, many broadcasters are planning to launch new talent shows to fill the vacuum, lure audiences and advertising dollars in 2009.
With SMG's ability to commission productions with advertising revenues from its lucrative home market, and the capacity to handle distribution into other provinces either directly on satellite or through program trading, there is formidable weight behind the Alliance and it will be expected to start showing positive results at the 2009 Shanghai TV Festival scheduled for June.