Can the self-produced talent show help Sohu Video regain its momentum?

At the beginning of 2015, Zhang Chaoyang, who returned to Sohu Group for a whole year, made it clear in his recent content speech, "In 2015, I will move from a low-key to a high-profile position, from the backstage to the front stage to lead Sohu Group into the future."

In response, Zhang Chaoyang opened his own Sina Weibo account with real name, re-established and affirmed the profit value of portals, and expressed his belief that the PGC era is about to explode.

Moreover, on January 13, Sohu Video announced that it would launch the "Looking for Good Songs" project, a national interactive music talent show with 56.com, on two platforms. As the first joint operation project after Sohu Video acquired 56.com, Sohu Video hopes to start a new round of complete layout in the video field with a full video platform strategy of copyrighted long videos, live video, self-media, UGC, and PGC. Betting on the national talent show, Sohu Video may be able to regain a game among video websites.

Re-emergence of talent shows

In fact, this "Looking for Good Songs" program is not Sohu Video's first attempt at a talent show. Prior to this, in 2012, Sohu Video and Hunan Satellite TV jointly operated the talent show "Go Up! Youth" through strategic cooperation. This program not only opened up a new interactive model of online and TV linkage, but also set a new record for the single investment of large-scale original online video activities in China at that time.

Although "Go! Boys" won over 100 million hits for Sohu Video, it did not create the ideal brand effect for Sohu Video. After the show ended, there were no other video websites imitating the show, and there was no follow-up from Sohu Video itself. The trend of creating stars on the Internet new media platform gradually faded in the tide of self-made film and television content on video websites.

After Sohu Video was handed back to Zhang Chaoyang, Sohu Video, under Zhang Chaoyang's decision, began to stand out from the video website industry with high-quality American drama resources and self-made film and television content. Whether it is the fragmented micro-comedies "Diaosi Man" and "Jipin Lady" that were born for the Internet, or the self-made drama "Fleeting Time" that was carefully cultivated and invested in advanced 4K display technology, Sohu Video's exploration of self-made content has never lacked novelty.

Especially after the full acquisition of 56.com, the utilization and integration of 56.com has always been the focus of the entire video website industry. After all, Sohu's acquisition of 56.com is not exactly the same as Youku.com. The extremely similar businesses of Youku and Tudou will cause the two companies to face the problem of repositioning during the integration process. 56.com, which is known for its UGC and PGC, is completely different from Sohu Video, which has the advantage of copyrighted content. Therefore, how Sohu Video makes good use of the 56.com card in its hand has become another important yardstick to test Zhang Chaoyang's leadership and decision-making ability.

At the launching ceremony of the "Looking for Good Songs" project, Zhang Chaoyang made it clear that the acquisition of 56.com would not make the 56.com brand disappear, but would continue to strengthen the brand power of 56.com.

Restarting the PGC Era

Zhang Chaoyang said, "China's PGC is in an explosive trend. Together with 56.com, Sohu Video is preparing to build a business system so that music producers or various video producers who upload content on Sohu Video can use this ecosystem to make money."

It can be said that the newly launched "Looking for Good Songs" program is an important manifestation of Sohu's full use of 56.com's industry advantage. In the program process, netizens uploaded original music works to Sohu and 56.com platforms to start the audition part of the entire program, and thus established the form of self-media musicians.

At the same time, during the creation of this program, Zhang Chaoyang chose to continue to maintain the independence of the two platforms and completed the "merger and acquisition" by connecting the backend and account systems of the two platforms.

As for why they chose to start the dual-platform strategy with 56.com with self-made elective programs, the new receiver Ma Yi said that 56.com has inherent self-media attributes and has a large number of young users. In terms of providing user-generated content (UGC) and professionally produced content (PGC), 56.com will continue to play its inherent advantages and work in synergy with Sohu Video to encourage original productivity and the production of high-quality content.

Zhang Chaoyang also emphasized that while leading Sohu to a high-profile stance in 2015, he also hopes to leverage the dual-platform strategic alliance with 56.com to enable both Sohu Video and 56.com to break out of the existing price war among video sites and thus create a new business model for video sites.

The launch of the talent show "Looking for Good Songs" may be the beginning of this transformation. In the process of hundreds of millions of UGC users transitioning to PGC producers, how to make full use of the transformation advantages of this platform attribute to create its own commercial value is not only a problem that Sohu Video is particularly concerned about after joining 56.com, but also a problem that the entire video website urgently needs to think about and solve.

With the arrival of the era of "content is king", this kind of thinking needs to be integrated into the development of the entire video website industry. After the rapid rise of Mango TV, which is exclusively provided with high-quality content resources from Hunan Satellite TV, the extreme shortage of high-quality TV program content has forced the entire video website to embark on the "road of no return" of self-produced programs. The bold attempt of Sohu Video and 56.com may just be the beginning of video websites seeking multiple directions for self-produced content.

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.