Mango TV starts Kung Fu mode: "But we are not all-powerful heroes"

The number of users has exceeded 10 million, the company's valuation has exceeded 10 billion, the annual advertising contract amount is nearly 1 billion, and it has successfully entered the first camp of video websites and once topped the download rankings of major applications...

Mango TV has always been regarded as an outlier in the video website industry, but it is this "newcomer" that does not play by the rules that has achieved the above results in just one year.

And these are just the beginning. Mango TV, which claims to be fully launching the "Kung Fu Mode", what other big moves will it make in 2016?

Not Wal-Mart, Mango TV wants to be "IKEA"

At the Mango TV 2016 brand launch conference, Liu Chenliang, executive vice president of Mango TV, described the "Tai Chi and Xingyi" combination punch in Mango TV's 2016 content planning with the sentence "The important thing about Tai Chi is drawing circles, and the power of Xingyi is the whole strength", and said that Mango TV will move forward at an accelerated pace with "youthier" and "more online" content.

As we all know, Mango TV started last year by relying on the high-quality program resources of its parent station Hunan Satellite TV, and successfully established itself in the fiercely competitive video industry through the "exclusive broadcast strategy". As Liu Chenliang described, "Hunan Radio and Television's creative ecology over the past decade has pushed Mango TV's one-year development and cultivation." In 2016, Mango TV will continue to "accumulate strength for a breakthrough", continue to build the first variety video platform, and deeply operate Hunan Satellite TV's trump and new variety shows. In addition to Hunan Satellite TV's strong IPs such as "Happy Camp", "I Am a Singer", "Idol Coming", and "All Accelerate" which will be exclusively broadcast on Mango TV, the entire platform will also synchronize Hunan Satellite TV's new variety shows, including "Super Change", "The Most Wanted Class in the World", "Tornado Filial Son", "Energetic Boys" and a total of 17 trump and new variety shows.

Mango TV has not really entered the copyright market for a long time. In fact, it only got half of the market resources for all drama IP copyright projects in 2015. Just like the "circle" in Tai Chi, Mango TV has already made great efforts in the deployment of drama resources in 2016: it has fully covered the three major theaters of Hunan Satellite TV, and has launched a number of network super IP self-made dramas in collaboration with famous production directors and teams, such as the crime mystery suspense drama "The Crime Fighter" directed by "Psychological Crime" and Yu Zheng's first online drama "Half-Demon Allure".

Liu Chenliang said in an interview, "Mango TV is definitely not a porter for Hunan Satellite TV. We organize content with users as the core, not with the platform as the core. Comprehensive video sites have had problems from the beginning. No one can be an all-rounder. We may be IKEA, but we will definitely not be Wal-Mart. The previous all-encompassing model of video sites will gradually die out. The future will definitely be a vertical, unique, and boutique model."

Judging from the content and official description of the programs that Mango TV will broadcast next year, Mango TV is more like a supplement to Hunan Satellite TV. Due to its attributes and policy constraints, its TV programs cannot be as flexible and borderless as online videos. With the goal of becoming the "Internet's No. 1 variety show video platform", Mango TV will focus on strengthening the variety show content that is difficult for TV stations to do well and is in line with the Internet viewing model and has a relationship with users.

Still an outlier among video sites

The "exclusive broadcast strategy" has made Mango TV achieve its "great leap forward", but it has also made its peers in the video industry furious, and they regard Mango TV as an outlier. So, amid public discussion, will Mango continue to stick to the "exclusive broadcast strategy" next year?

Recently, Hunan Satellite TV's 2015 mega-scale creative reality game show "Ace vs Ace" will be broadcast on Mango TV's entire network platform, following "Where Are We Going, Dad?". Mango TV took the initiative to distribute "Ace vs Ace" to LeTV for joint broadcasting, in exchange for LeTV's cash of over 100 million yuan and LeTV's top exclusive drama resources in 2016. This move is also the first time that Mango TV has agreed to cooperate with other video websites for joint broadcasting since it launched the "exclusive broadcast strategy" in May 2014.

The outside world has questioned whether Mango TV may gradually give up its exclusive content broadcasting. In this regard, Ding Cheng, president of Mango TV, said, "Cooperation with LeTV is an attempt for us. We also hope to use external resources to stimulate our team to produce better content. This cooperation is still an individual case, and Mango TV will continue to adhere to its exclusive broadcasting strategy." According to Liu Chenliang, LeTV is the sponsor of "Ace vs Ace", and the two parties will use their respective exclusive broadcasting resources to make a ratio, but in terms of self-produced variety shows, Mango TV will launch a "sharing plan" in the future to maximize value.

In addition to exclusive broadcasting, Mango TV's quirkiness is also reflected in its use of Internet thinking. In the exchanges with Ding Cheng and Liu Chenliang, one can clearly feel the difference in thinking between Mango TV and other video websites when facing users and the market. Take program production as an example. Currently, most video websites hope to make a variety show or TV series at the level of a TV station, and often compare their products with TV programs when promoting them. However, due to its background, Mango TV always hopes to get rid of the temperament of a TV station and make a program that is more in line with the temperament of the Internet.

It is also worth noting that Mango TV’s new CTO Huang Dong said that as the only video ecosystem company in China that integrates high-quality content, broadcast control platforms, smart TVs, boxes and other products, Mango TV has done a lot of thinking on smart TVs and decided to develop a new smart hardware product, which is expected to start internal testing in January next year.

As for Mango TV's future listing plans, production of more hardware products, and development of overseas markets, Ding Cheng used the phrase "everything is possible" to express that Mango TV will embark on a more diversified exploration path in the future.

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.