Excuse me, how to make money by texting?

Www.hexun.com Global Entrepreneur/Wang Yiding

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In early August, Wang Peng lived in a luxurious suite of Portman Hotel on Nanjing West Road, smoking one cigarette after another. The former news anchor of Hunan Satellite TV is enjoying an unprecedented reputation: because his Shanghai Tianyu Media Co., Ltd. has produced the most popular entertainment programs in China in recent 20 years.

: super girl (hereinafter referred to as "super girl").

As for the popularity of this program, just look at a few basic figures: in 2005, 6.5438+0.5 million women of all ages signed up to participate, with more than 20 million die-hard viewers. According to the survey data of 3 1 city provided by CCTV Sophomore, the viewing share of Super Girl Guangzhou knockout once exceeded 10% at its peak, that is, for every 100 people sitting in front of the TV in China, 10 people were watching it. It is rumored that the advertising fee for Super Girl is 1 12500 yuan, which exceeds the "standard price" of CCTV News Network 1 10000 yuan. In the week of August 19, the final of "Five Entering Three", Chris Lee, one of the contestants, won more than 1.8 million SMS votes, and one SMS was charged one yuan. This "profiteering" made China Mobile take the initiative to launch canvassing activities.

"I haven't seen this craze for making music and pushing singers for a long time. Lu, general manager of Beijing Network Show Digital Media Culture Co., Ltd. said. Lu was a producer of Warner Records and one of the judges and planners of Super Girl in 2004. Although his occupation is packaging online music, the reality is that almost everyone who sees him will take the initiative to talk about "super girl".

In the era of declining ratings in the Spring Festival Evening, China TV industry has found a real "killer application". Its owner is Hunan Satellite TV, which once had a reputation as a pioneer in the reform of the TV industry. Five or six years ago, its Happy Camp and The Covenant of Roses also became the innovation benchmark of this industry. However, since the revenue of 200 1 (the cover article of February 200/kloc-0 "TV Xiang Jun" announced the end of its golden age) dropped sharply, Hunan Satellite TV was once suspected by the industry to have lost its golden finger-the fierce competition between channels, and the local advertising market resources have dried up. The next step of Hunan Satellite TV.

The meaning of "super girl" is definitely more than that. "This is no less than the influence of Desire and Focus Interview on China TV industry in 1990s. She was the first "revolution" in China's television history. Bao, director of the R&D Center of Shanghai News Media Group, said that Super Girl undoubtedly provided unlimited satellite TV for China, which has been silent for many years, both in the form of TV media and in the level of TV commercial operation.

It means that a satellite channel can still create a column that challenges CCTV in ratings and influence. In fact, under the strong channel coverage and absolute advantage of CCTV resources, domestic satellite TV channels are restricted by policies, technologies and advertisements, and even local landing fees as high as 70 million restrict their expansion of influence; Although Oriental TV is news-oriented, Hunan TV is good at entertainment, and anhui tv is a TV station, the advertising revenue of satellite TV has shown an obvious downward trend in recent years, and the homogenization of domestic satellite TV products has seriously led to the continuous thinning of advertising profits; Internet and outdoor media have also diverted the resources of TV advertisements.

"Super Girl" undoubtedly provided a new growth point for the breakthrough of the whole TV station, and it caught a new wave of trends. "If Happy Camp is the beginning of the era of star entertainment, then Super Girl is the symbol of the era of mass entertainment," said Wei Wenbin, director of Hunan Radio and Television Bureau.

This view has been widely recognized by the American media. USA-Today, the largest daily newspaper in the United States, said: "Although the name is not as smooth as' American Idol', it can't stop Mengniu Yogurt Super Girl from sweeping China." "The Baltimore Sun" said: "Super Girl has opened up a huge untapped reality show market and foreshadowed the arrival of more similar programs, if policy and TV station managers are determined to get out of the limitations of singing competitions."

Wang Peng, who is in the center of "Super Girl Storm", may be one of the few TV people in China who don't watch Super Girl every Friday night. "My team and I should realize the transformation from TV people to businessmen as soon as possible," Wang said. In a recent interview with Global Entrepreneur, he expressed great ambition: to go beyond the specific level of TV technology and content, realize the transformation of TV program business operation level, "make the brand of super girl truly become the golden signboard to make money", introduce investors and realize MBO.

This is not simply a cheap way to bring home a cash cow. At the same time, Wang also gained huge risks: little known, Super Girl has made little profit so far, and the company is still losing money. What worries the audience most is that according to the rule of the entertainment program "Fire lasts only three years", next year will be the "last supper" of Super Girl.

Just like love.

In 2002, Wang Peng Entertainment Channel was reorganized and the Planning Department was established. There is no requirement to work every day, and there is no clear task. There is only one requirement: discuss and develop new columns that entertainment channels can try. Soon after, Liao Ke, an employee of the planning department, put forward "Super Girl", a performance similar to "American Idol" which was popular in America at that time.

For most people in China, the whole impression of "American Idol" comes from William Hung, a young man from China who is tone-deaf and looks not outstanding. He became famous overnight because of the phrase "I have tried my best, so I won't have any regrets". But the more important message of "American Idol" is that the great success of this program and another TV series "Joe Millionaire" enabled Murdoch's News Corporation to reverse the decline of 25% in its investment in British newspapers and make a profit in the third quarter of fiscal year 2003. It originated from a series of TV programs "Pop Idol" produced by fremantle Media in Britain.

During the discussion, what impressed Wang Peng most was that the program was very participatory and "sticky" to the general audience. Years of experience in TV programs told him that "this program will not be bad even if it is not hot."

In 2003, "Super Boy" tried water in Hunan, and the number of applicants on that day exceeded 3,000, far exceeding the number of participants in the same program of Hunan Satellite TV "Star Sister"; On this basis, in 2004, Hunan Satellite TV officially launched Super Girl, and began to cooperate with local TV stations in other provinces outside Hunan to try to open the competition area. In the same year, Shanghai Tianyu, jointly invested by Hunan Satellite TV and Beijing Tianzhong Culture, was established to be responsible for the brand operation of Super Girl outside Hunan. In 2005, the five divisions of Super Girl started singing at the same time, which finally made China.

On the surface, Super Girl is not so innovative. Its talent show, large-scale live broadcast and public participation, which are relished by the audience, are all operating modes that have become industry rules in recent years. Why can only super girls be a great success?

The secret is that the operation mode of Super Girl in each stage makes it full of freshness: the first round of "sea election", regardless of singing, appearance and region, all kinds of unpredictable performances are quite like a farce; Followed by a series of elimination games, after the sea election, the players have a certain performance ability, giving the audience the feeling of idol drama; From the top ten competition, the audience formed feelings for the singer and evolved into a suspense blockbuster with participation.

In order to show the best effect, Hunan Satellite TV has taken great pains in the "software": each judge plays a different role in it, and the audience's emotions are mobilized between laughter and scolding. In the audition stage, contestants are required not to wear makeup, and only use bad lighting and unadorned stage for recording. As the program enters the elimination stage, the contestants' packaging and stage design are started, and even the best lighting effects are used, so as to "mobilize every element of TV and show the process from ordinary people to stars", which will arouse the audience's emotional investment with the deepening of the program-just like a love affair. Wang Peng called it "the core weapon of Super Girl".

Although two other programs similar to Super Girl were released around 2004-CCTV's Chinese Dream and Oriental TV's Lycra My Show-compared with CCTV's previous Chinese Dream with strong entertainment atmosphere and Lycra My Show, which aimed at eventually creating a star who signed a universal record, Super Girl obviously made more efforts in program production and returned to the essential form of TV.

Another accidental institutional factor is the core factor of Super Girl's success. Although Tianyu is responsible for operating the "Super Girl" brand, the special mother-child relationship between Tianyu and Hunan Satellite TV determines that Hunan Satellite TV is willing to build the best program production team for it regardless of the cost. Not only that, for TV stations, time slot is the most important asset, which will obviously be used on their own programs first, and the key factors for the success of Super Girl are large time slot, super mass and continuity.

This is the support that Leica Me Show can't match at all. This program is produced by Shangteng Entertainment, a joint venture between Universal Records (49%) and Shanghai Wenguang (565,438+0%). Through the "draft", it seeks potential singers for Universal Records in the mainland and is packaged by them. Shangteng has the right to operate the program brand, and Dragon TV is responsible for the production and broadcasting of the program. In this special triangular relationship, Lycra's title income, which has the largest income, has gone up. Although Shanghai Wenguang can still get a share, it has not directly benefited from the independent accounting entity program of Dragon TV. "From the form of the program, Super Girl is a live show, and the Leica I-type I show is more like a selection topic. The charm of the former lies in the process of progress, while the focus of the latter lies in the results. Besides, the channel resources of Dragon TV are limited. An insider of Dragon TV said.

Therefore, my program can only be recorded and broadcast instead of live broadcast with high participation, which greatly affects the charm of TV talent show. Without the support of a large number of channel time resources, my program can't show the tension of TV and form continuous attention. "Super Girl integrates TV resources, but Lycra can't maximize the value of TV."

Win cheers

Although "Super Girl" made Hunan Satellite TV earn enough attention, neither Tianyu nor Hunan Satellite TV made a lot of money because of this program, and the same embarrassment also appeared in Oriental TV and Shangteng. Although the profitability of the two satellite TV companies is the first in the domestic satellite TV industry, these two TV stations can still achieve a small increase even when the ratings and advertisements of other TV stations are stagnant or even declining, but they still cannot fundamentally change their fate because of a program.

In 2004, the main business net profit of Radio and Television Media, a listed company of Hunan TV Station, was only 26.05 million yuan, far lower than the income of Sina and even some print media. In its annual report, it didn't even mention "Super Girl", but brand TV series such as Absolute Power and Fengyun 2 really contributed.

"Hunan Satellite TV didn't make any money because of the super girl", Wang Peng admitted, and the outside rumors were more about "only talking about numbers and not counting accounts".

At the beginning of 2005, Mengniu signed a contract with Hunan Satellite TV for the title of "2005 Super Girl", and Mengniu invested 654.38+04 million yuan, including the title, 654.38+05 seconds of advertising, corner signs and "heap voting" at each competition site. The key to the agreement between the two sides is that the super girl in 2004 was a loss. In 2005, Hunan Satellite TV hoped to sell the naming rights first to ensure the benefits, and Mengniu's "yogurt" products began to try to enter the local media.

"Even if there is no super girl's voice, Mengniu's advertising volume in Hunan Satellite TV will reach 8 8- 10/00000." Sun Xianhong, vice president of Mengniu, thinks this business is very cost-effective for Mengniu. But for Hunan Satellite TV, this means that there is no substantial advertising premium because of the hottest programs.

In fact, Mengniu's investment only basically met Hunan Satellite TV's investment in organizing activities and program production in the five major competition areas. Under the situation that local channel resources are tight and competing with each other, the cooperation between Hunan Satellite TV and local TV stations belongs to pure investment and has no income.

Take Zhejiang as an example. The local partner is Qianjiang City Channel. Hunan Satellite TV brought the judges, program mode and production process, and Qianjiang Metropolitan Channel was responsible for the specific organization and the whole recording. The cooperation between the two parties does not involve cash transactions, and all advertising revenue belongs to Qianjiang Channel. In terms of program production, Hunan Satellite TV has not injected capital into Tian Yue. It needs to provide certain channel resources for a series of rights and interests replacement with Tian Yue Company, and provide millions of program production expenses, including lighting, dance beauty and related stylists and players.

What has never been disclosed before is that the advertisement of super girl has not hit a sky-high price. "At present, the advertisement for Super Girl is 15 second 20,000, and it's because Super Girl has reached the sky-high price," Wang Peng denied. In the past, Hunan Satellite TV's prime-time advertisements sold well every Friday night, and the super girl did not bring a considerable price difference. Advertisers usually have a one-year advertising contract. Although Super Girl became popular overnight, the contract at the beginning of the year cannot be changed.

There is no expected "spillover effect". "It is impossible to completely change the management pattern of a satellite channel by relying on only one program. Channel operation is realized through a series of complete profit point designs such as program investment (production or purchase), program arrangement, advertising investment and brand promotion. " Bao Xiaoqun said that Super Girl is not an annual program. At present, China is trying to add a few months, a season or half a year to the annual advertising plan, but it still needs a process. At the same time, it is also important to unify the positioning of this season and the next program. Even if Hunan Satellite TV launched Super Man in the second half of the year, there are still differences in product positioning, whether the program is stable or not, and whether it will be "hot" next year is still variable, which limits the demand of advertisers.

Even if the boldest expectation is that the ratings of Super Girl will be further improved next year, advertisers still have reason to be skeptical. If we want to build a national brand, CCTV is still the first choice, and its network covering suburban counties has inherent advantages; If creating a local market, advertising companies usually choose local main channels instead of satellite channels. Take Shanghai as an example. Dragon TV is not the main channel in Shanghai. As the local main channel, Shanghai Satellite TV's revenue is close to 600 million, while Oriental TV usually can only achieve less than 200 million. Although in Hunan, Hunan Satellite TV is both a satellite channel and a main channel, as declared by local advertisers, "If you want to hit the Hunan market, you should invest in it."

In Super Girl, the mobile phone often becomes a part of the program, but it is not as impressive as expected. "Which TV station can make a profit by SMS? This is the website of Telecom. " Wang Peng stubbed out the cigarette butt.

According to the weekly short message volume, some media estimated that the short message income of super girls exceeded 20 million in the first half of the year alone, and a person familiar with the advertising department of Hunan Satellite TV thought the figure was too exaggerated.

About 65,438+08% of them are separated from telecom. In addition, the proportion of bad debts caused by SMS reception failure will account for 10-30% (SMS reception failure occurs, calculated by operators). In addition, due to the split between Hunan Satellite TV and another SP operator, "Hunan Satellite TV's SMS revenue will not account for half of the entire SMS revenue".

For Hunan Satellite TV, the high investment and production cost of such idol programs are covered up by the noisy scenes. Since Tianyu was founded two years ago, this company has not made a profit, and this year is not optimistic. Although it has the right to use the brand outside Hunan, the company cannot make a profit through advertising and naming.

In terms of investment, in 2004, Tianyu invested 654.38+0.2 million yuan, and the first album Hello, Jay Chou was created by super girl champion An Youqi in 2004. Although it is estimated that there will be sales of 600,000 copies, under the pressure of rampant piracy, the profit of each record is less than 2 yuan. "An Youqi's record cost has been basically recovered, but An Youqi himself is still in the investment period," Wang Peng said.

In terms of income, "the development of ground resources is used to support the development of artists' resources". Wang Peng said that the main income of Shanghai Tianyu in the past two years came from the development of ground activities, and the Buddhist concert in Hengshan, Nanyue, the ancestor worship in Yandiling and the reorganization and opening up of Mudra Ancient Temple in Ningxiang, Hunan Province were its main sources of income.

Wang Peng has other worries: Fremantle Media, a British TV production company, is planning to file a lawsuit against Tianyu's Super Girl because it didn't buy the copyright of the program template; However, in China, because the trademark of "Super Girl" was not registered in time, all kinds of clothing and jewelry stores of "Super Girl" and "Super Girl" caught Tianyu off guard. Tianyu, which lacks commercial operation experience, needs to start its business process from the basic trademark registration.

All this, compared with American Idol, seems to lack business operation experience. Although News Corporation paid 75 million pounds for the license of American Idol, it also earned a lot of income from related licensed products. In the past four years, the global cumulative sales of "Idol" brand products reached $654.38 billion, covering 35 categories such as toys, candy, business cards, video games, magazines and books.

"On the whole, Super Girl's influence on TV program form far exceeds its influence on program management," Bao said.

Will the sky entertain MBO?

Now, Wang Peng is the deputy director of Hunan Satellite TV Entertainment Channel, and his colleagues are also the staff of Hunan Satellite TV. But they are planning a big move: MBO. In Wang Peng's words, "Hunan Satellite TV has tried for many years on the original system and mechanism, but it has stagnated at a certain level, and this time it wants to make a complete breakthrough".

Starting from the original Hunan Satellite TV Entertainment Channel, the team of nearly 60 people from Tianyu basically came from the TV production talents of Hunan Satellite TV Entertainment Channel rather than commercial operation talents. Hunan Satellite TV's wholly-owned subsidiary is registered in Shanghai, and the resources injected by Hunan Satellite TV are the brand operation rights of Super Girl, Super Boy and Star Sister outside Hunan.

When traditional TV people are confined to the circle of advertising and ratings, Tianyu hopes to find a brand road for TV programs. "Is it possible for TV brands to expand their industries and integrate into the industrial chain?" Tianyu takes care of both parties, maintains the research and development of upstream program content and the right to use the program brand, in exchange for the channel resources of TV stations, and maximizes the brand influence through authorized integrated marketing. At the same time, it is integrated into the industrial chain to earn income from downstream brand operation and artist brokerage business development.

It is not difficult to understand where Wang Peng's motivation comes from. Although it has also created a brand column with great success, Hunan Satellite TV has never developed derivative products with corresponding value. If we can make some gains in artists' contracts, records, books, networks, and even clothing and animation accessories, it will surely become an important page in the history of China TV industry.

This ideal will make Tianyu's business model unique in China's immature entertainment industry chain. Other star enterprises in the industry, such as Shanghai Teng Entertainment or Beijing Light Entertainment, although the former also participates in the production of some programs and operates brands to earn revenue, they are more similar to brokerage companies in essence, while the latter earns advertising revenue by producing TV programs and selling them to TV stations for advertising time.

Does Tianyu have the ability to seize opportunities? The answer is that operation will directly determine the real vitality of this commercial "draft"-it just didn't show enough strength before.

In 2004, Tianyu only signed a contract with Super Girl champion An Youqi, giving the second and third place to Guangzhou Geometry and Beijing Tianzhong Development. At first, Tian Yue was introduced into the sky, hoping to rely on its powerful music production ability to develop singer and agent resources. Tianzhong did create the first album "Hello, Jay Chou" for An Youqi. But what is hidden behind the cooperation is the huge difference between TV people and musicians: it costs 6.5438+0.5 million yuan to shoot an MTV for An Youqi in the sky, while the budget of Hunan Satellite TV used to be 4-5 thousand yuan.

The bigger conflict centers on Tanaka and Yue's optimism about different super girls: the former supports Baby Zhang, a girl of 16 years old who won the third place last year, with sweet appearance but ordinary voice. When Mengniu found An Youqi's endorsement products, Tianyu offered a high price. When Mengniu found Tianzhong, Tianzhong agreed that Baby Zhang would endorse Mengniu for free. In 2005, the publicity of Mengniu products and the popularity of Baby Zhang set off each other, and the momentum of Baby Zhang greatly surpassed that of An Youqi. "Tianyu still has a long way to go to learn how to broker an idol, especially an idol elected by civilians," said an industry insider.

Three months ago, Tanaka withdrew from this cooperation. But Wang Peng didn't give up his dream: "I want to be a real brokerage company". According to his plan, "Super Girl" will produce new people every year, Tianyu will sign contracts with potential players for 7 to 8 years, and then Tianyu will choose powerful partners to cooperate, such as records, such as acting and even performance business, from which Tianyu will extract about 10%. However, before holding out a superstar, Super Girl is more like a karaoke with public participation than an elevator to the entertainment circle. Even so, how can Tianyu find a star who can become famous overnight?

This means a high cost-"super girl is really a gamble, and it takes training to complete the transformation from a popular star to a star." Not only that, because Tianyu signed a contract to produce no less than a certain number of records, if Tianyu did not find a partner or the rights of the partner were too high, Tianyu would bear the high cost of record production alone. In 2005 alone, Tianyu signed contracts with 50 singers. On the other hand, super girls come out every year, and if they are not shot in time, they may become "rotten apples". However, if Tianyu only holds the brokerage right and only cooperates with singers on a single record, the cooperation of project system will inevitably fall into the trap of short-term interests. The investment of artists is usually the curve of making money in the first three years after investment.

For Tianyu, the fatal weakness is that it has no experience in artist brokerage and music production, or even a team, but it has to face 50 or more artists at the same time. "Unlike other products, brokerage companies deal with people, and you have to find everyone's small universe to maximize it," said Yu, managing director of Beijing Tianzhong Culture. In the past, I represented the brokerage business of Andy Lau 1996 to 2000. "We pulled a barbed wire for Andy Lau. There is a song "Love You for 10,000 Years" this year and a movie "Infernal Affairs" next year. The brokerage company will continue.

The deeper contradiction is that the role conflict between TV station and brokerage business is Tianyu's biggest obstacle TVB in Hong Kong is the most typical example. Brokerage companies want to maximize the interests of artists, and the interests of TV stations lie in themselves. They want artists to do more for TV stations, and conflicts are inevitable. "If an artist has two jobs, one is to help TVB and the other is to make a movie in Wong Kar-wai, the artist who signed TVB is likely to choose the latter"; Not only that, Hunan Satellite TV and Tianyu are the "super girls" who are willing to help Hunan Satellite TV? The competition between TV stations and the blood relationship between Tianyu and Hunan Satellite TV are not conducive to the growth of brokerage business.

If artists are the core assets of Super Girl brand value, then another asset is the development of its derivative products. "At present, the value of domestic entertainment programs through derivative products is still difficult to exceed the advertising value of the programs themselves." Bao believes that the value of derivative products that super girls may bring should never be overestimated.

Bao recently completed his media management training and inspection in the United States. He believes that the value of derivative products to the media industry, from the experience of mature markets, should first consider the relevance between TV programs and products, not all programs can have derivative products naturally; Secondly, the case of vertical integration in the media industry constantly shows that not all derivative products have a big market; Moreover, the industry of derivative products has its own rules. To operate through brand authorization, it needs consistent carriers, consistent products and accurate market positioning and design to ensure the quality of program brands and product development. "The participation of large groups and companies is very important."

Wang Peng is not without a plan. "Even for everyone, Ye Yixi is filming before singing.". Potential plans include "Super Girl" clothing in cooperation with a large domestic clothing company, making records for "Super Girl" in cooperation with a powerful domestic record production company, a TV series about "Super Girl" to be launched in September, and a series of national commercial performances after the competition.

In some respects, Tianyu has obvious advantages and is well versed in TV production and operation experience. Integrate TV resources, optimize broadcast platform resources in a short time, and build TV brand influence.

However, the short board of this advantage is also obvious. "Tianyu can't always overemphasize the resource advantages of Hunan Satellite TV without giving up some rights," said a person who negotiated with Tianyu. In fact, Tianyu hopes to develop into an independent brokerage company, but how can Tianyu integrate other media broadcast platforms to support its mother-child relationship with Hunan Satellite TV? Tianyu hopes to get copyright income through the innovation of program content in the future, but are other competitive TV stations willing to buy it? Not only that, Tianyu has no income from advertising and naming rights, and there is no revenue share of Hunan Satellite TV. How to operate? In cooperation with other business partners, to what extent does Tianyu obey Hunan Satellite TV, and to what extent will Hunan Satellite TV affect a business cooperation?

In the eyes of the industry, the more radical idea is to divest all the program production and advertising operations of Hunan Satellite TV Entertainment Channel to Tianyu. Hunan Satellite TV only keeps the channel resources. "This shell has real appeal." An investor who did not want to be named said that this idea is still a substantial "big leap" even for Hunan Satellite TV, which dares to be the first in the atmosphere.

"Tianyu is not short of resources and talents, and hopes that powerful investors will enter," Wang Peng said, with a tone like hosting a news broadcast, but there is no doubt that everything is not as beautiful as he said. (Assistant reporter Zhang Jing also contributed to this article)