Online video vs. TV: TV still has the upper hand in 2015

Since 2013, the doomsday theory of the television industry has swept the market. In the next two years, as the centralized position of television content was gradually established, although there was a brief brake in the middle, the sharp growth of "online video" (hereinafter referred to as "video") in 2014 and the unsatisfactory performance of the television industry once again formed a sharp contrast.

The rapid development of first-tier TV stations in 2014 could not offset the low tide of the entire TV industry. At the same time, although first-tier TV stations have continued to have outstanding performances, they have not been able to offset the market's pessimistic trend towards the TV industry.

This situation, along with the gradual breakthrough of the bottleneck in video revenue, the initial recognition of advertisers for self-produced content from iQiyi, Youku and other companies, and the optimistic expectations brought about by the huge investment that the entire video industry is preparing to make in the self-produced field in 2015, the market seems to be increasingly pessimistic about the situation of the television industry.

From the user's perspective, both video and TV satisfy the user's audio-visual needs. Overall, TV currently has a dominant advantage in terms of content, while video has an advantage in terms of experience.

However, the video experience advantage is not absolute. In terms of high-definition picture quality and sound quality, videos are generally at a disadvantage. The TV is also more comfortable to watch with your back against the sofa. Compared with sitting forward, the effect should be relatively better from the perspective of experience.

Although video is undoubtedly ahead in terms of convenience and viewing anytime, anywhere, the video content library is also larger and content extraction is more convenient. However, with Hunan Satellite TV and Shanghai TV making efforts on the Internet, it is foreseeable that the gap with video in terms of experience will be narrowed.

The industry generally believes that the existing advantages and potential of video determine its broad future prospects. This view is certainly correct from the perspective of trend observation, but the current main growth driver of video comes from the huge potential of the "traditional business ecosystem online", which cannot last forever. At the same time, it should be noted that the first-tier TV stations in the TV industry are currently eroding the advantages of video by adapting to the trend of the Internet.

Compared with television, the real potential advantage of video at present is that it is closer to users who are migrating online on a large scale. The technology research and development orientation dominated by "user behavior" enables video to better understand the evolution of user behavior brought about by technological development. Therefore, logically speaking, it is also more capable of breaking through the limitations of the television model.

This trend is indeed emerging. In order to adapt to the transfer of effective traffic, both traditional film and television companies and traditional publishers have begun to cooperate with videos that occupy the center of online audio-visual, which is conducive to the creation of new business forms for videos.

But what cannot be avoided is that through the efforts of the past two to three years, the first-tier TV stations have initially established content dominance, and judging from the current situation, this dominance can be maintained for at least two to three years.

This industry situation means that in the next few years, the content source of audio-visual terminals may still be mainly supplied by first-tier TV stations. Even if the video industry's "self-production strategy" can be successful in 2015, the TV content of first-tier TV stations will still have more advantages in terms of scale and influence, which also makes their content more conducive to generating derivative value.

It is precisely this point that has led to the dominant force behind this wave of restarting China's cultural industry coming mainly from the "first-line stations" in the television industry, rather than the video industry in the emerging audio-visual center.

In this case, if online video wants to realize its grand story in the future, it may need to break through two important hurdles.

The first is to extend from the current vertical market worth tens of billions to the TV stock market worth hundreds of billions. This process is actually a hand-to-hand battle to grab food from TV. Obviously, this battle is not easy to fight. Although the centralized position of TV content is not solid, video needs better tactics and strategies to enter the market. Although video has practiced the living room strategy for more than two years, it has not achieved the expected results.

The path of the domestic living room economy is limited by the intervention of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, and it may not be easy to follow in the next one or two years. There are restrictions on licenses and obstacles in administrative regulations. At least from an administrative perspective, in order to reshape the media influence of the national team, it is still difficult for the video industry, which is supported by private capital, to gain more voice in the living room market, or the cost of investment may be very high.

Secondly, even if we overcome the hurdle of television and enter the television stock market worth hundreds of billions, there are still doubts about how to expand the television stock market worth hundreds of billions into a supermarket worth hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars and fully develop this market.

Ironically, the first to test the waters of this future supermarket were the first-tier TV stations that once again reaped a bumper harvest of content in 2014. Popular variety shows such as "Where Are We Going, Dad?", "The Voice of China" and "Running Man" have begun to experiment with peripheral industries, whether in movies, hardware or games.

This strategy is actually equivalent to breaking through the commercial barriers between the media industry and the entertainment and cultural industry, extending the content value of the first-tier TV stations to the cultural and entertainment industry. Moreover, in the face of such a thrilling and huge change, the first-tier TV stations have achieved good results.

Although the understanding and related operations of the entertainment and cultural industry in the cultural and entertainment industry innovation led by the first-tier TV stations still have great problems, it is at least a signal of breaking the ice. If the market is not blind, this historical turning point is undoubtedly a milestone. Therefore, the market's pessimism about television is indeed illogical.

At the same time, it is worth lamenting that I wonder if anyone has seriously considered what impact will be brought about if the barriers between the media industry and the cultural and entertainment industry are completely removed. In my personal opinion, the entire media industry (including new media) and China's entertainment industry will be reshuffled. Given the huge role of the cultural and entertainment industry and the media industry in influencing social groups, the impact on the entire comprehensive market will also be far-reaching.

Therefore, whether the grand imagination space of online video can be maintained at the market and capital levels depends on whether it can overtake the first-tier stations that are already leading in this field and acquire the ability to dominate market development during the evolution of the cultural and entertainment industry supermarket. This is the second hurdle.

Finally, assuming that video and first-tier TV stations are in a competitive relationship, first-tier TV stations were not late in the layout of the video field. The progress of video has only been in the past two or three years. For first-tier TV stations with strong content advantages, the current advantage of video in the audio-visual mode is not too great. In addition, first-tier TV stations have been continuously carrying out market-oriented and capitalized reforms in the past two years. The two or three years of lag may not be an insurmountable gap. From this perspective, the video industry may not need to be complacent about the achievements made in 2014.

Write at the back

Why have video companies' IPOs not achieved high valuations in recent years? Because the video industry's current innovations in the audio-visual industry are indeed not enough to support its large scale, and if this situation does not change, it can only mean that the best time for video industry IPOs has not really arrived, and has never appeared before.

At the same time, the root cause of the market's pessimistic view of television in the past two or three years is that it seems to have exaggerated the current media advantages of video; on the other hand, it has ignored the market prospects that may be created in the future by breakthroughs in television content.

The key point is that the entire market irrationally ignores the fact that the "first-line TV stations" have actually already completed their separation from the entire traditional TV industry and are becoming a new force that breaks away from traditional TV.

As a pole in the Internet tide that is gradually integrating Internet technology and constantly marketizing and capitalizing, first-tier TV stations should not only be treated differently, but also their role in promoting the extended value of the audio-visual industry should be recognized. Their form is very different from traditional TV.

In fact, compared with the video industry, the "industrial television" represented by the first-tier stations has reshaped the prosperous new content market and the pan-social entertainment trend brought about by the market. The industrial innovation they have carried out has actually had a greater ripple effect on the market level, whether for the entire media industry or related extended industries. The restart of China's cultural industry is a perfect example.

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.