LeTV Video Gao Fei: "Guaranteed + Divided" will accelerate industry transformation and reduce industry uncertainty

LeTV Video has decided not to "buy" TV drama rights anymore. At the Shanghai TV Festival, when the news broke, the industry was filled with various voices. After the exclusive broadcast war and copyright war on video websites have once again heated up, the overall competition threshold has been raised to a considerable position, and reducing copyright investment will be regarded as giving up. In fact, it no longer "purchasing" copyright does not mean that LeTV Video denies the drama purchase transaction itself, but attempts to use the ecological advantages advertised by its will to deeply bind it to more links in the industry chain and share the benefits generated by TV dramas. Share to partners.

Original title: LeTV Video President Gao Fei: Using various methods to try to reduce uncertainty in the TV drama industry

LeTV Video has decided not to "buy" TV drama copyrights.

At the Shanghai TV Festival, when the news broke, the industry was filled with various voices. After the exclusive broadcast war and copyright war on video websites have once again heated up, the overall competition threshold has been raised to a considerable position, and reducing copyright investment will be regarded as giving up.

In fact, it no longer "purchasing" copyright does not mean that LeTV Video denies the drama purchase transaction itself, but attempts to use the ecological advantages advertised by its will to deeply bind it to more links in the industry chain and share the benefits generated by TV dramas. Share to partners.

In the reporter's exclusive interview with Gao Fei, president of LeTV Video and chairman of LeTV Sports, we can find that LeTV Video is developing new ways of playing in terms of content and TV series.

First of all, LeEco's partners in the video and TV drama fields are more adopting the "guaranteed + shared" method. In the case of a basic guaranteed price, in addition to receiving the copyright sales fee, the copyright owner can also enjoy a share of revenue in addition to the guaranteed price.

Logically, such a cooperation model means that the risks borne by the film and television drama companies will be reduced, and the higher the attention the content receives, the more shares the film and television companies will receive. This incentive mechanism allows film and television drama companies to have more space and motivation for convenient content polishing.

It is worth noting that in this new model of cooperation, Le Financial will also appear and provide support to solve the "triangular debt" problem in the industry. "We tried TV drama finance innovation, which is accurately called Supply Chain Finance. It previously existed in the fields of mobile phone manufacturing, TV manufacturing, and commercial components. It is a kind of accounting period management." Gao Fei said.

Second, LeTV Video is entering the content investment field of pan-entertainment. In LeTV Video's 15 billion-dollar strategic plan, part of the funds and resources will be used for investment in this field.

In a previous interview with reporters, we learned that LeTV Video has invested in a startup company that was once the chief director of "Running Brothers" Cen Junyi. The company aims to establish a more industrialized production system by strengthening the importance of variety screenwriters, thereby improving the originality of domestic variety content. In addition,"Nanpai Mutual Entertainment" established by the famous online literature writer Nanpai Third Uncle also received investment from LeTV Video in 2015.

In this exclusive interview, Gao Fei introduced to reporters the "guaranteed + shared" cooperation model and how LeTV Finance plays in the latest 15 billion strategic plan released by LeTV Video.

The following is Gao Fei's dictation.

1 "Translator Official" to "Legend of Miyue"= Only topic dramas are lethal

. Now everyone thinks that "Translator Official" is not as good as expected. I think this is a matter of opinion.

It needs to be admitted that at first we defined it as a workplace drama, but now we find that it does have flaws in this regard. It is difficult for actors to reach that professional level in a short period of time. In the final analysis, this is an idol drama.

These complaints will promote "The Translator" to become a topic drama similar to "The Crown Princess" and "The Legend of Mi Yue". Controversy means more people discuss and more people participate, and making it a part of your life is the ultimate goal.

The trough of a play is also its spread point. Generally speaking, people who think the drama is good will have a weak willingness to speak out, unless the drama is very good and you have a strong desire to show others the idea of Amway. People with ideas and opinions have a stronger willingness to speak out and are more conducive to the spread of the drama.

In our budget, TV dramas do have more budgets than other types such as variety shows or anime. Because there are only a dozen good variety shows throughout the year, and their number is less than that of TV series. Although there are only a few TV series that are phenomenal, they are sub-high every day. In the past, everyone said that TV dramas attracted traffic and variety shows realized money. In fact, now the monetization ability of TV dramas is not inferior to variety shows. Some such as "Legend of Mi Yue" are even stronger than variety shows.

You will find that LeEco was popular last year for costume dramas such as "The Legend of Miyue" and "The Crown Princess", and now LeEco is launching modern dramas such as "The Translator". Because people are prone to aesthetic fatigue, we concentrate on arranging one type of drama for a period of time. Television stations are different. Television stations will broadcast the same type of plays for a long time in pursuit of safety. Because innovation may fail, they cannot pay for the failure caused by innovation, so they dare not innovate.

Relatively speaking, the Internet will have more advantages in this regard. The themes of the Internet platform will be richer, including thrillers, suspense, and reasoning. Some themes that are difficult to see on TV stations can be launched on Internet platforms. However, our scales should be the same. It is problematic for the Internet to use large-scale descriptions to distinguish it from TV stations. From the perspective of theme and efficiency, the Internet platform is already competitive enough.

Letv focuses on domestic dramas, but we won't give up overseas dramas. We have won the exclusive rights to the Korean drama "She's Beautiful" and are expected to be broadcast in July. In addition, LeTV and Jiaxing will jointly produce a China version of "Beautiful She", which will star Sheng Yilun. At that time, we will do joint marketing between the China version and the Korean version of the drama. There is also the American drama "X-Files", which we will broadcast in late June and early July.

2 "Guarantee + Share"= Accelerate industry transformation

In general, everyone is facing great uncertainty, whether it is producers, TV stations, and Internet platforms. Now LeTV is trying to reduce this uncertainty through various methods. Uncertainty.

Our current cooperation with the producers adopts a "guaranteed + shared" approach.

It turns out that for pure copyright transactions, on the one hand, the broadcast platform may take advantage of information asymmetry to buy better content at a lower price, which is unfavorable to the copyright seller. On the other hand, this transaction has a fixed income to the copyright seller. Except for some necessary project follow-up, it will not have the initiative to help the broadcast platform do things, which causes a lot of inconvenience to the promotion and marketing of the broadcast platform.

Changing the single thinking of this one-time transaction to a bottom-up and bonus method can enable us to develop together and make the cake bigger together. Although the industry is still very fragmented and it is still difficult for everyone to accept this approach of low guarantees and high shares, it is necessary for us to provide them with such creative solutions.

We cannot say that the timing to propose this kind of plan is accurate, but we know that LeTV's proposal will definitely accelerate the arrival of this kind of change. This model may break the unspoken rules of some industries at the beginning, but over this time, the development of the industry will become healthier and healthier. LeTV has always been a pioneer in the entire industry, just like in 2012, when no other company had online dramas, we had already begun to try in this regard.

However, as pioneers, we don't think much about how much corporate benefits we can get. LeEco has always put industrial value before corporate value. I hope that some of LeEco's actions can make the entire industry healthier. The first one will definitely have some advantages. At least in terms of favorable impression, LeTV may be more favored. In the future, this healthy industry model will feed back to us in a subtle way. I think this is enough.

I hope that our cooperation with each family now, whether it is preliminary investment or commissioned development, is based on standardization. Our model is fixed, and then we will make some personalized adjustments based on this. For some companies that are not very large, the temptation will be stronger. This output method can reduce their risks and the possibility of increased profits.

We have certain particularities in the face of companies that build strong relationships. In theory, they are still completely independent, but at the same price, because we have a better understanding of the project through high coordination and cooperation in the early stage, and will be more comfortable in communication and operation than other companies, they are also more willing to sell it. Sold to me. But we are not mandatory.

We will invest in some production companies, as will other platforms. But when purchasing content, we actually don't think much about whether the investors behind it are our competitors. Information in this industry cannot be fully evaluated. When selecting content, you will still see whether it is valuable to you.

We try TV drama financial innovation, which is accurately called Supply Chain Finance. It previously existed in the fields of mobile phone manufacturing, TV manufacturing, and commercial components. It is a kind of accounting period management, because the TV industry is a typical triangular debt.

After this model is established, the content side and the platform side will have frequent business interactions. I need money and it is inconvenient to push you too hard, so I changed a third party to come over, so I can effectively break the chain of debt.

It is very good for content companies. It can lock in its operating cash flow in advance, and after it is locked in, its reproduction will not be affected. In the end, the risks will slowly decompose. Although financial companies have taken on risks, they can spread the risks through the development of some products.

Editor: yvette