Mango TV is stuck in the cycle of "old problems"

LeEco's capital chain problem was a hot topic due to Jia Yueting's internal letter, which triggered heated discussions among the public. At the same time, a big news about Mango TV also made many people in the industry sigh. The delisting of Youku and the failure of iQiyi's privatization made Duyujun sigh: the video website theme has been repeatedly frustrated by the capital market...

It is learned from DuYuJun that recently Kaola.com announced that it would terminate the asset restructuring plan of listing seven companies including Mango TV, TE Media, and Mango Entertainment. Mango TV's path to listing through asset restructuring has hit a snag. Mango TV has a strong background as a traditional TV station. At the same time, it is seen as a counterattack of traditional media against new media, and even a benchmark case of traditional radio and television transformation. However, Mango TV's capital road has been quite bumpy despite its position.

Why is the stock market always saying no? Mango TV’s capital road is cursed

Mango TV sought external financing as early as October 2014. Data showed that the company's valuation was more than 6 billion yuan at that time. When it completed its A round of financing in June 2015, it officially announced a valuation of 7 billion yuan and announced plans to list on the New Third Board. However, due to many external and internal factors, the plan to list on the New Third Board was aborted after a year.

At present, Mango TV has a market valuation of 13.5 billion yuan after the B round, but its position in the video website is still in the second tier in terms of volume, far behind the first tier iQiyi, Youku, Tencent Video, etc. As a listed company under Hunan Radio and Television, Happy Shopping has strong e-commerce attributes. If they cooperate, it is likely to bring about a breakthrough in new profit models. Therefore, instead of letting Mango TV and Happy Shopping struggle in the second tier, it is better to merge the two and go public to "become the emperor".

However, Happy Shopping announced last week that it would terminate its asset restructuring, which means that the plan to inject Tianyu + Mango TV into the listed company as a whole has failed. The official reason given by Happy Shopping is that the asset status of the target company involved in this major asset restructuring plan is relatively complicated, and the restructuring plan is still under discussion and improvement, and the conditions for implementation are not yet mature.

Are the assets of the companies involved complicated? Let me quietly explain the companies involved in this case: Happy Sunshine (Mango TV), Tianyu Media, Mango Entertainment, Mango Film and Television, Golden Eagle Cartoon, Mango Interactive Entertainment and Tianyu Advertising.

Why has Mango TV been struggling with whether to go public? This is related to the inherent constraints of the state-owned system in which Mango TV is located. Mango's parent company is Hunan Radio and Television Group. The upstream is the decision-making group of traditional media, and the downstream is the development strategy of pure video websites. The executive layer and the decision-making layer are always issues that cannot be avoided in media transformation. Perhaps Mango TV's internal pioneering forces have not yet occupied an absolute dominant position.

Integration of production and broadcasting or separation of production and broadcasting is not just a problem for Mango TV

When the separation of production and broadcasting first came out, Hunan Satellite TV's innovation was praised and imitated by everyone. When Hunan Satellite TV officially launched the "Mango" TV exclusive broadcasting strategy in May 2014, it was called a panacea for traditional media in the new media era by the industry. Now, let's follow Duyu to talk about Mango TV's new "integration of production and broadcasting" - the exclusive broadcasting model.

The opposite of the integration of production and broadcasting is the separation of production and broadcasting, which was introduced from the United Kingdom and the United States. Due to translation factors, many people think that "separation of production and broadcasting" means that the TV program production company and the broadcasting company are not the same company. For example, a TV station buys a popular program from one company and a new IP from another company, which is the fashionable "separation of production and broadcasting". In fact, program production companies (or independent producers) in countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States are affiliated with the broadcasting organizations of the programs. For example, the 15 independent production companies of the British ITC in the country were all established by ITC. Program production companies in the United States also have a certain number of shares in each program company. Therefore, the independent production system is not independent in terms of capital, and the term "diversified program production" can more accurately reflect the original meaning of "separation of production and broadcasting".

Therefore, the essence of separation of production and broadcasting is "diversification of program production" rather than "separation". The real domestic separation of production and broadcasting is "The Voice of China" produced by Zhejiang Satellite TV and Canxing: after determining the program plan of "The Voice of China", Zhejiang Satellite TV and Canxing Production signed a contract later known as the "betting agreement", which stipulated that if the program ratings were lower than 2%, the huge production costs in the early stage would be borne by Canxing Production, and if the ratings were higher than 2%, Canxing would share the advertising revenue with Zhejiang Satellite TV at a ratio of 7:3, and there was no upper limit.

Similarly, the new type of "integration of production and broadcasting" represented by Mango TV - Mango calls it exclusive broadcasting - should also focus on maintaining program diversity to adapt to market demand.

Judging from the exclusive programs currently produced by Mango TV, in addition to Hunan Satellite TV's flagship programs such as "Happy Camp" and "I Am a Singer" and other variety shows, there are also variety shows such as "Where Are We Going, Dad" that were broadcast from satellite TV to the Internet.

In addition to online variety shows, Mango TV's self-produced dramas "The Crime Fighter", "Half-Demon Allure", "Fire King" and "Ten Years of Warmth" which were announced in 2015 and started to be launched in 2016 did not make much waves. Many of its self-produced soap operas were not as popular as those of self-produced dramas from major platforms such as Youku and iQiyi.

Of course, in order to diversify its own resources, Mango TV, in addition to producing its own programs, also purchases exclusive programs from TV stations. However, compared with other video websites, Mango TV's purchase of copyrighted content is quite minimal, and only a few of them can be effective.

Du Yujun believes that the separation or integration of production and broadcasting is just a formality. What really determines the success or failure of a video media company is the market rules. This requires the top management to have keen insight and decisiveness. Success cannot be achieved by hyping up concepts or using tricks.

Hot variety shows are not the savior

Let's talk about Mango TV's most powerful variety shows. In fact, it is not difficult to find that Mango TV's user clicks are inseparable from popular variety shows, which has led to a cliff-like visit curve: when popular online variety shows such as "Flowers and Youth" and "Where Are We Going, Dad" appear, the popularity and user usage of the entire Mango TV will experience explosive growth, but if there are no high-quality programs for a period of time, the value of the entire platform will quickly fall back.

Unclear profit model

When all the problems come down to the issue of money, they become naked. Although the exclusive broadcasting model has given Mango TV enough content competitiveness, the problem of its profit model has not been solved. At present, Mango TV's main businesses include video websites, Internet TV, Hunan IPTV and mobile value-added services. However, domestic video content has always been free, and it is obviously unrealistic to charge for content.

Whether it can be "profitable" may be the most important factor restricting Mango TV's capital road. Especially at present, LeTV's precarious situation and other video websites' non-independent paths with their own backers have made the capital market and regulators maintain a relatively calm attitude towards the money-burning theme of "video websites".

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.