Guangdong TV and Youpengpule join hands to create a new OTT model?

Entering 2015, OTT seemed to have reignited a new war after being regulated. First, on January 20, Xiaomi, LeTV and 1905 released new products on the same day. Later, Guangdong Radio and Television Station and Youpengpule continued to bombard news about OTT, making it difficult for people not to pay attention.

Based on recently disclosed information and some information obtained by my friends, this article will sort out the trends in the OTT TV industry landscape, and focus on and analyze the strategic layout and tactical path of Guangdong TV's license.

Three major trends in the OTT industry

After experiencing wild growth in 2013, OTT TV faced Document No. 181 in 2014 and strict regulation of copyright content. Industry rules and the industry ecosystem were adjusted and changed accordingly. The author believes that three major trends have emerged.

Trend 1: The division between the camps of license holders in terms of resources and capital is becoming increasingly clear

Previously, all parties in the industry chain, including licenses, content, channels, and terminals, were caught in a chaotic battle, but it seemed that no one dared to put all their eggs in one basket, presenting a situation of intertwined interests. However, after a series of attempts, trials and errors, and corrections, the seven major licensees used policies to restore their status in the arena, and resources and capital began to line up around the licensees. Before, you could "borrow" a license as an umbrella by buying a terminal serial number, but now you have to "cling to someone else", and you have to compete to see who clings tighter. For example, Youku Tudou invested in Guangdong TV, Alibaba invested in Youku Tudou, and indirectly invested in Wasu; Pengbo invested in Galaxy Internet TV, and iQiyi was originally a shareholder of Galaxy; Youpeng, as a close partner of Guangdong TV's OTT license, pulled Sohu and 360 into the partnership through the content cooperation alliance. The seven major licensees began to gather resources and capital, and the division of camps became increasingly clear. The relevant entities also gradually found a compliant path to enter the OTT field in the collision and running-in.

Trend 2: Internet companies are making efforts to fight for capital and copyright in the film and television industry in the OTT market

After the road to the big screen in the living room through the APP client was blocked, Internet companies began to focus on the film and television production industry. After the establishment of Alibaba Pictures, iQiyi and Youku Tudou successively established film companies. At the end of last year, 360 and Guangguang Media established a joint venture company, which mainly operates Internet video business with movies as the main business.

After poaching Chen Tong, Xiaomi spent a lavish $1 billion to invest in the content sector, successively acquiring shares in Youku Tudou and iQiyi, and later investing in Huace Film & TV together with Baidu. Unlike several other Internet companies that directly entered the film and television production industry, Xiaomi mainly supplemented its own content deficiencies through investment and shareholding in order to strengthen its boxes and TV terminals.

Combined with the above analysis, in addition to the obvious line of the license holder, capital and copyright have become a hidden line. Although it is not as glorious as the obvious license holder, it is still uncertain who is the core of the interests behind it! For example, the halo of Alibaba's listing is on Jack Ma's head, but the biggest beneficiary is SoftBank's Masayoshi Son. After the transformation of Xiang-E Qing, Zhongke Cloud Network failed to succeed. Two days ago, the Royal Group, which is in the dairy industry, released a restructuring plan to acquire Shengshi Jiaoyang for 780 million yuan. In addition, there are two or three cross-border players that the author has recently contacted, and each of them has prepared billions of dollars and is eager to try. After being unable to enter the OTT market in a high-profile manner, video websites and capital have turned to a secret war.

Trend 3: License competition presents three modes, Guangdong TV may have advantages

Regardless of which of the open and hidden lines will ultimately win, judging from the current competitive landscape of Internet TV, last year's continuous regulatory policies did play the role analyzed in the article "The New Era of OTT" half a year ago . "It enabled the industry to get rid of glitz and excess bubbles, and brought new opportunities for the video industry to think calmly and rebuild a reasonable ecological environment, thus ushering in a new era for OTT and the entire video industry." After all, without the attention of capital, the entire video industry, including cable TV, will lose its activity and development space in the market.

The competition landscape among the seven major licensees is entering deeper waters. It is no longer just a superficial game of circling TVs, circling boxes, and aggregating content. It currently presents three modes.

The first is the group army combat mode, with BesTV being the most prominent. Under Uncle Li's manipulation, BesTV and Oriental Pearl, two major listed companies, were reorganized, and then five business groups and a 1+6 one-cloud and six-channel full media layout were launched. Unfortunately, this time it failed to take back the controlling stake of Oriental Cable from Shanghai Xintou. Wasu has one more cable network than other companies, and its dual-wheel drive route of network and media can be roughly classified into this category; the second is a model of deep interaction with TV stations. Currently, only Mango TV has this model, and Hunan TV's high-quality entertainment copyright resources have become an important support; the other companies can be roughly attributed to the third model, that is, an integration model of joint ventures and cooperation with external resources. Among the three central TV stations, China Radio and Television Oriental and China Radio and Television Galaxy did not have any resource advantages in video. In the future, TV could have relied on CCTV to form one of the first two models or a model that combines the first two models, but CCTV's resource policy is not yet clear. I am afraid that the tone can only be determined after the new director takes office.

Under the new pattern and model, you will find that the license of Guangdong Radio and Television, which has not been very eye-catching, may have the characteristics and advantages of the above three models. Can their recent continuous cooperation with Youpeng jointly create a new OTT model? The following is some analysis on this.

What are Guangdong TV and Youpengpule doing?

Guangdong Radio and Television's Internet TV license was originally called "Southern Media" in the industry. It has been working closely with Youpengpule for nearly four years. On March 16, 2011, Southern Media's Internet TV business "Internet All Directions" was officially launched . Liu Lanlan, editor-in-chief of China Broadcasting Internet, probably still remembers this press conference vividly.

License, brand and cooperation model

It is said that Southern Media considered integrating its controlled Guangdong Cable "small provincial network" into the Guangdong Provincial Network. In order to avoid internal competition, it took the initiative to give up the IPTV license it held at the time and switched to an Internet TV license.

Later, the IPTV license policy was adjusted, and even BesTV, which was listed because of its IPTV business, had to give up its independent license. Under the care of the General Administration, it established AiShang Media in a joint venture with CNTV, and AiShang became the only national license. Southern Media abandoned its IPTV license and switched to an OTT license, which was quite prescient in hindsight. Of course, due to various reasons, Southern Media failed to obtain a controlling position in the integration of Guangdong Provincial Network, but Zhang Huijian, the then president, subsequently launched the reform journey of "three stations into one" of Guangdong Television, Southern Television, and Guangdong People's Broadcasting Station.

During this process, Southern Media adopted a light-asset operation strategy based on cooperation for its Internet TV business, and Youpengpule provided support in terms of technology, copyright and operation. It is precisely because of this that Southern Media was spared from the OTT control wave last year because it did not have a deep layout. It is really hard to predict whether it will be a blessing or a curse.

On April 23 last year, the "three stations into one" was officially completed and "Guangdong Radio and Television Station" was launched, aiming to achieve a revenue of 10 billion yuan in the next two years and return to the top of China's radio and television industry. Faced with the three-dimensional competitive TV market and the strategic requirements of media integration, the in-depth development of the Internet TV field has undoubtedly become a major focus of Guangdong Radio and Television Station's new strategic breakthrough in 2015.

It is understood that its Internet TV will launch a new service brand and is currently going through the registration process with the General Administration. As the exclusive strategic partner of Guangdong Radio and Television's Internet TV business, Youpengpule is responsible for the broadcast control management of the Internet TV platform, while Guangdong Radio and Television is responsible for technical platform support, content integration and operation services. This is also a cooperative model under the General Administration's OTT control policy. Just like last October, when Galaxy incorporated iQiyi's TV division , Youpengpule will no longer use its own OTV business brand in the future, but will work hard to provide good services for Guangdong TV.

Content, channels and terminals are in full bloom

In terms of content, U-Pop and Sohu established the " Internet TV Content Cooperation Alliance " in November last year, and 360 has recently joined . U-Pop already has advantages in Hollywood films, 4K, movies, music, children's content, etc. The "Internet TV Content Alliance" further expands and enhances its content strength. It is reported that all the copyrighted content of the alliance will be provided to the Internet TV platform of Guangdong Radio and Television Station.

Sohu has a clear advantage in domestic TV series, American TV series, variety shows and self-produced dramas, while 360 ​​has just formed a joint venture with Guangguang Media to add cinema blockbusters, film and television entertainment, etc. Analyzing the current content structure of Youpengpule, sports programs may be the next content direction to be introduced.

In the field of hardware cooperation, Youpengpule recently announced strategic cooperation with Skyworth and Changhong, and jointly launched new Internet TV products with Guangdong TV and manufacturers. The license holder Guangdong Radio and Television will be responsible for integrated broadcast control management functions, Youpengpule will provide technical support, content provision and operation services, and terminal manufacturers will be responsible for customized production and sales of TV sets. It is also reported that an Internet TV jointly launched by Guangdong TV, Youpengpule, Skyworth and JD.com on Double Eleven in 2014 not only became a hit, but also helped Skyworth TV win the sales champion of JD.com's "Double Eleven".

In terms of channels, Guangdong TV and Youpengpule have fully completed the DVB+OTT business of the top four cable TV operators in China: Shandong Cable, Jiangsu Cable, Guangdong Cable, and Henan Cable. According to public data, the four largest cable TV operators in China currently cover a total of 50 million digital TV households, of which more than 20 million households have completed two-way high-definition transformation. In addition, it is said that DVB+OTT business cooperation with cable TV operators in Guangxi, Shaanxi, Heilongjiang and other provinces is also being deployed in full swing.

The combination of Guangdong TV and Youpengpule has an access license and spans four major channels: cable TV, telecom operators, TV manufacturers, and box terminals. In particular, it holds the operator market, which has the most monetization value at present. Its future potential cannot be underestimated.

Competition in business operations

It can be said that the battle for resources in the OTT field has already taken shape, and the focus of the competition will shift to specific commercial operations such as content provision and services.

The advertising market is undoubtedly a battleground for Internet TV. At the beginning of the new year, Youpengpule launched the "500 million advertising red envelopes" strategy , which attracted much attention. Shao Yiding, chairman of Youpengpule, said that Internet TV is still in its early stages of development, and its strong advertising market penetration has not yet emerged. The "500 million advertising red envelopes" strategy is a preemptive investment strategy based on the future development potential of this market. Not long after, Nielsen Netcom officially announced that it would join the plan and provide third-party data standard support.

It is understood that the "500 million advertising red envelopes" will be placed on the Internet TV platform of Guangdong Radio and Television Station, and the red envelopes will be given to the gold medal advertisers of Guangdong Radio and Television Station, thus forming an integrated marketing. The good interactivity, accuracy and controllability of Internet TV are its core values. The concept and data support of "Youzhong Return" proposed in the "Internet TV White Paper" jointly released by Nielsen Netcom and Youpengpule last year are also quite novel and attractive.

Just yesterday, news broke that Youpengpule will join hands with Guangdong TV and other institutions to launch a "positive energy" channel on the Internet TV platform . On the one hand, this channel complies with the Administration's major policy of purifying online content, and the touching positive energy videos will also be welcomed by users. The advertising revenue obtained through this channel will be donated to charity, but Youpeng has established a very good contact with advertisers through this, laying a good foundation for future commercial cooperation, which can be said to be "killing two birds with one stone".

Guangdong TV's licensing strategy is flexible

As mentioned above, there are currently three models for license holders. After the integration of "three stations into one", Guangdong Radio and Television has basically completed the comprehensive and profound structural adjustment of its system and mechanism. The Internet TV business is a chess piece in the planning and layout of Director Zhang Huijian. The dividends of the system reform will enable its OTT business to receive strong support from the group army. At the same time, the next step can also be to interact deeply with the TV station's business, not only the sharing of copyright IP and integrated advertising marketing, but also through the interaction between programs and users, quickly improve the stickiness of its Internet TV business. Even if we take a step back, in terms of resource integration, with the help of cooperation with Youpengpule, we have now completed a framework layout in content integration and the four major channels of cable, telecommunications, TV and box terminals.

In the Internet era, the success of one entity is based on the success of related entities. This sentence has always been the motto of my business. In today's impetuous business society, win-win cooperation is easy to say, but it requires vision and wisdom to truly practice it.

Shao Yiding, chairman of Youpengpule, recently described it to the author like this: OTT service is like giving users a necklace. If the necklace wants to look good, each bead must be carefully selected, and Youpengpule only plays the role of threading the needle and stringing these clear and round beads together.

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.