Sanduotang docking capital enters the new third board: documentaries grow by 30% annually

Gao Xiaomeng, who has been the main producer of a series of documentaries, said: "Sanduotang Company has now entered the capital market and is expanding into new types."

Author: Yu Ning

Source: Public account Wensanban001

Sanduotang Company has been engaged in the documentary industry for 18 years. During this period, it mainly filmed documentary blockbusters. Its representative works mainly include "The Rise of a Great Power","Company Power","Five Thousand Years of Chinese Characters","Legend of Miyue", etc. Recently, Sanduotang Company has also begun to integrate with the capital market and entered the ranks of the New Third Board.

On March 20, 2014, Beijing Sanduotang Media Co., Ltd. was listed on the New Third Board with a total share capital of 20 million shares. On March 29 this year, Sanduotang announced that it planned to establish a wholly-owned subsidiary Zhejiang Sanduotang Film and Television Culture Co., Ltd. with a registered capital of RMB 1 million.

From this point of view, Sanduotang Company, which specializes in a series of documentaries, seems to have developed well after being listed on the New Third Board. So today Xiaowen takes everyone to explore what is the reason for documentary development so rapidly.

The documentary industry has developed rapidly, and the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television has contributed significantly?

In the film and television industry, the documentary industry is regarded as a small film, or a marginal film. The establishment of the CCTV Documentary Channel in 2011 has a very big promotion effect on this industry. Since 2011, this industry has been growing at a rate of 30% almost every year. It has begun to move from the edge of the stage to the center of the stage.

Gao Xiaomeng, general manager of Sanduotang, said: "The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television attaches great importance to and supports the documentary industry. Compared with TV dramas and variety shows, in recent years, all the policy launches of documentaries made by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television have been supportive." First, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television has approved three satellite channels for documentaries in the past two years, namely Beijing, Shanghai and Hunan. If CCTV 9 and CCTV 10 are added, the number of satellite channels for documentaries will reach five. In addition, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television has also stipulated that all satellite documentary channels must broadcast half an hour of documentaries every day. It is also this policy that has increased the number of broadcasts in the documentary industry by 6,000 hours.

So from a market perspective, the documentary industry is indeed rising. Due to its low starting point in the past, documentaries have developed rapidly, but their size is still very small. There are currently several blue books with the caliber of the overall documentary market in China, which is more than 4 billion yuan. However, this volume statistics are not comprehensive. It only includes the investment of television stations and possible government agencies. The investment of many large companies and even the production of smaller documentaries is not included in the volume.

The diversified documentaries led by "Where Are We Going, Dad" are very profitable.

Traditional documentaries are generally series documentaries, also called documentary blockbusters. They are about six to twelve episodes in size, with each episode about 50 minutes. The investment for a single episode of the documentary series is between 1 million and 3 million RMB, and the production cycle takes one and a half to three years.

Gao Xiaomeng, who has been the main producer of a series of documentaries, said: "Sanduotang Company has now entered the capital market and is expanding into new types."

There are several new types mentioned by Gao Xiaomeng, such as the timed column. The timed column is actually a very large branch of documentaries. It is a documentary other than a series of documentary blockbusters; the instant column has low unit investment, but the program volume is very large. In addition, there are documentary films, promotional films, documentary films, etc. for film and television dramas.

Among them, promotional films are documentaries that many large enterprises and government agencies want to make, because the promotional films made by documentary companies are deeper and more thoughtful than advertising companies; perhaps advertising companies are better at making pictures, but documentaries will focus on the expansion of ideological connotations and horizons.

Documentary films are a type of film being produced in China. Examples such as "Where Are We Going, Dad" and other real-time reality shows are all types of documentary films. Real-time reality shows expand the extension of documentaries. Documentaries should also include real-time reality shows, because many reality shows are filmed entirely in accordance with the filming methods of documentaries.

Nowadays, many real-time reality shows in China, such as "Where Are You Going, Dad", break through the boundaries of traditional documentaries and are very commercial. The huge fan base brought by the stars has made a huge profit for the follow-up economic benefits of the reality show.

Traditional documentaries are not profitable? Then how to make money!

There are generally four main investors in documentaries, one is a television station, the other is a government agency, the third is a large enterprise, and the other is a new media. From the perspective of business model, it is indeed difficult to make money by broadcasting and recovering costs. But documentaries have their own very unique value, that is, the comprehensive effect produced by documentaries, which has led to the development of some other projects at the back end of the industrial chain, which is far better than the money earned by the documentary itself.

For example,"A Bite of China" has not invested much in the film itself. Its value lies in the development of the entire industrial chain driven by "A Bite of China", among which Taobao and catering industries alone have developed a scale of 300 to 400 million yuan. Therefore, the ultimate benefits of a good documentary are likely to exceed those of the best TV series or movies, because the investment in the documentary itself is very low.

"I think what should be emphasized is how to develop when documentaries drive the entire industry chain." Gao Xiaomeng said.

Therefore, a particularly good destination for a documentary company is to combine it with a tourism real estate company or a tourism company. Using documentaries as the vanguard, and then using other things to drive and do the subsequent harvesting is actually a good business model in the capital market. Opening up the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain actually means this.

Editor: yvonne