Chapter 2139 Chaotic and Fierce Competition

There are cable television stations in many countries around the world.

A cable TV station is a pay TV station, and you need to pay a monthly fee to watch the programs on it.

The way is to use the set-top box mode, install an encrypted set-top box for you and open the permissions, and you can watch the programs broadcast on this channel.

If you don't pay the fee, they will immediately cut off the signal through the background, and you will no longer be able to watch it.

In addition to such cable TV stations in the United States, Xiangjiang also has them, Japan also has them, Korea also has them, and Britain also has them.

But the most important thing is the cable TV station in the United States.

Relying on its strong national power and the support of the people in the richest countries, the cable TV stations in the United States are the largest, the most competitive, and of course the most profitable.

Even including the wireless TV network is the same.

The wireless TV network in the United States, excluding those small and medium-sized regional TV stations, is roughly divided into six major giants.

They are General Electric's N.BC TV station, Viacom's CBS TV station, Disney's ABC TV station, 20th Century Fox's FOX TV station, CW TV station jointly founded by CBS and Warner Bros., and the semi-official PBS TV station.

The latter one is basically ignored, because PBS mainly produces public content, and the most famous one is the "Nature" series of documentaries, which are juxtaposed with BBC documentaries.

The remaining five TV stations are all giants like TVB, ATV and Kylin TV.

Countless good classic dramas come out of their hands, and the most widely spread TV dramas that we are familiar with are basically produced by these wireless TV stations.

However, it is now 1986, 20th Century Fox's FOX TV station is still in preparation, and the CW TV station co-founded by CBS and Warner Bros. will not be established until 2004.

So now the three major TV news networks are competing with each other, and the ABC TV news network has also become the industry of Kirin Group, including Disney.

For the remaining two, CBS is still operating independently. This year, General Electric just acquired the parent company of N.BC, so N.BC has officially become a member of General Electric.

The battle of these wireless TV stations has existed since ancient times, and has been fighting since the establishment of the TV station.

Basically up to now, the three major TV stations have reached a bottleneck.

Although they can't defeat each other, they have stabilized their basic market and belonged to the role of a joint monopoly market.

Therefore, the three major TV stations are no longer fighting to the death. Except for the most popular months, the rest are still negotiable. Everyone give in to each other.

The wireless TV network that relies on advertising revenue is so free and easy.

But in the cable TV station, which is what we commonly call the pay TV station, the situation is different.

What everyone is competing for is the users, and it is the subscription fees of these users.

There are only so many American families who need to subscribe in total. If you have more, I will get less, and if I grab more, I will earn more.

Therefore, the competition in this area has been bloody from the very beginning, without any warmth to speak of.

There are two types of cable TV stations.

The first is called the basic channel, including FX, AMC, MTV, Disney, CNN and other TV stations.

The TV series they produce are relatively strict in scale and can be watched by most people, so the fees are relatively cheap. If you subscribe for a year, the average monthly fee is about 3-5 US dollars.

Of course, these TV stations still have to broadcast a lot of advertisements, and they belong to advertisements and fees to make money together.

The number of advertisements is definitely not as many as that of wireless TV stations, and because the charges are relatively expensive, they must be some high-quality advertisements, and no messy TV shopping will come in.

The second type of cable TV station is called premium channel, which is the TV stations we are familiar with such as HBO, Showtime, starz, and cinemax.

The scale of the TV series produced by this kind of high-end channel is astonishingly large, and it is basically the kind of self-release.

Also because of this, their subscription audience is much smaller than that of basic channels, let alone TVB's free audience.

Moreover, they basically have no advertisements and rely entirely on subscriptions to eat, so they devote themselves to the production of TV dramas.

Then come out and fight with the TV series to compete for the subscription fees of users.

You said free TV, viewers can just watch it casually, your paid TV series must be very good, otherwise why would I spend tens of dollars a year to subscribe?

In the beginning, their premium channels were of course difficult.

Before the 1990s, the number of paying users of HBO was less than 5 million. It was only after "Band of Brothers" that it grew by leaps and bounds. After 20 years of hard work, it reached more than 30 million people.

The remaining few companies are even more pitiful. Together, they don't have as many users as HBO.

At the same time, their subscription fee is much less than that of HBO, which is basically one-third or half of HBO.

Only in this way can their users increase, allowing them to maintain their own operations and continuously enhance their development.

However, after 2010, as the distances around the world continue to shrink and the Internet and entertainment become more and more developed, more and more foreign TV stations and Internet companies buy these high-quality American dramas, which gives them a lot of overseas profit opportunity.

Some TV series even lose money in the United States, but they can make a fortune overseas, which is similar to the situation of Hollywood movies.

For example, in the popular TV series "The Big Bang Theory", the protagonists' remuneration is 1 million per person, and the total remuneration exceeds 5 million U.S. dollars per episode, but CBS purchased it for 2 million U.S. dollars per episode.

So why can the production company survive and live happily?

It is because overseas copyrights have been sold in more than 100 countries and regions, even if the average price of an episode in each country is only 100,000 US dollars, they can still earn millions per episode.

Not to mention "Game of Thrones", which is broadcast in 193 countries and regions, so even if the production cost of an episode is as high as 10 million US dollars, which is comparable to a small production movie, the production company HBO is not afraid at all.

There is also a new category of paid media.

They are Internet streaming media.

Including Netflix, Amazon and HULU.

These are all Internet companies, and they didn't do any TV dramas and programs before.

But they use the newer network model as an opportunity to enter this already highly competitive industry.

The most representative is naturally the famous Netflix, which is commonly known as Netflix.

Streaming media is also charged by monthly subscription.

By 2017, Netflix had more than 42 million subscribers, much higher than HBO's 35 million, making it the number one in the industry.

That's not counting.

Even in the second half of 2018, Netflix's stock market value surpassed the world's largest entertainment media company, Disney, and became the world's number one!

This is too surprising!

Although this kind of stock price does not reflect the true strength of a company, it is of course impressive that it has developed so rapidly and achieved such great results.

Netflix mainly relies on its own production of TV series, as well as DVD and video network rental business to make money.

Their main profit point is in the United States, but the opening of streaming media subscriptions in more than 150 countries and regions around the world is still an important reason why their stock prices continue to rise rapidly, even surpassing Disney.

The online world connects the whole world together.

Therefore, everyone can subscribe to watch TV series produced by Netflix through the Internet, which is unimaginable in the previous TV era.

Of course there is no such good thing now.

Let alone online dramas, they are TV dramas produced by mainstream cable TV stations. They can only compete for subscriptions in the United States, so the competition is especially fierce.

Fortunately, the United States only has a population of more than 300 million. If they have the population of 1.5 billion in China, I am afraid that this scale and level of competition can directly open a big drama, allowing the audience to watch them fight hard while eating melon seeds .

Even if it is like this now, more than 20 wireless and cable TV stations in the United States can play dog ​​brains.

They themselves are biting the bullet and struggling constantly, but for the audience, it is a great thing.

Because of the need for a lot of competition and the need to constantly attract users and viewers, these TV stations have to show their housekeeping skills in order to survive and succeed.

The ABC TV station of the North American branch of Kirin Group has already established a good foundation in the field of wireless TV networks, and there is not much room for further development.

Therefore, Yin Jun felt that the next step should be in the area of ​​cable TV.

After watching these cable TV stations in the United States, Yin Jun realized that they are not like what Yin Jun thought when he was a child. As long as they charge a fee, they are classified as adult sex, and they are not suitable for children.

It is true that many cable TV stations are too big, and young people feel blushed when they watch them, but the TV series of cable TV stations that really do the best will definitely not be like this.

On the contrary, it can be watched by most age groups, especially adults with certain pursuits.

For example, "Band of Brothers", such as "Game of Thrones", such as "House of Cards", such as "Six Feet Under" and so on.

It is through such a trick that HBO has more than 30 million subscribers.

Netflix did the same.

As an upstart in online streaming media, they did not focus on the large-scale aspects of violence and pornography that are most likely to attract viewers in the short term, but instead focused on the charm of the TV series itself.

The "House of Cards", which made them completely popular, was born under such circumstances.

For "House of Cards", they even spent tens of millions of dollars and invited the Oscar winner to star.

The production is directly in accordance with the film model, without any perfunctory.

This kind of attitude has aroused the love of the audience, just like the meaning of "Band of Brothers" to HBO, "House of Cards" became popular all over the world, and officially let Netflix stand on the platform of mainstream TV drama production companies.

Before that, Netflix was nothing more than a layman's company, not popular at all.

In the 1990s, there was a saying that "produced by HBO must be a boutique".

And in 2020, this sentence will be changed to Netflix.

"A product produced by Netflix must be a boutique!"

It can also be seen from this point how fierce the competition in an industry is.

With such a big cake in the global market, the TV drama market in the future will inevitably become more and more intense.

If the TV drama production companies in Huaguo don't catch up, I'm afraid that in the future, our children will enjoy watching American TV dramas every day, just like watching Hollywood movies!

...

(Please subscribe!)