There are 5 major problems in the existing separation model

Market-oriented separation of production and broadcasting features

The agreement made by Zhejiang Satellite TV and Canxing Production in the production of "China Good Voice" has brought this model to the extreme. After confirming the program of “China Good Voice”, Zhejiang Satellite TV and Canxing Production signed a contract that was later called the “Betting Agreement” and stipulated that if the program rating is lower than 2%, the previous period’s huge amount The production fee will be borne by Can Xing. If the audience rating is higher than 2%, Canxing will share ads with Zhejiang Satellite TV at a ratio of 7:3 and it will not be capped.

However, the successful operation of "China Good Voice" does not mean that the contractual division model of Zhejiang Satellite TV and Canxing production can become mainstream. The broadcaster of the Chinese television industry is a television station. It is an institutional institution. Thinking habits and risks that may be faced make most broadcasters less able to make such marketization agreements with investors, but are relatively more conservative.

Taking CCTV as an example, it stipulates in its contract with the investor that produces and broadcasts the separated program that the investment is performed by the investor for program production and investment, with the final viewing rate of the program being the criterion, exceeding a certain standard, according to the advertising revenue. Divided into five or five, below this standard, the investor does not enjoy the division of advertising revenue. The majority of CCTV's production and broadcasting programs have adopted such a model, such as "Dancing Out of My Life," "Super Weight Loss King," "Taste Wars," and so on. Although the broadcasting party’s regulations on ratings standards are not harsh and can be completed under normal circumstances, for the investors, the capping income of the five-five division makes their enthusiasm and motivation more attractive than investing in the “Good Voice of China”. The production is much smaller, and the various restrictions on the copyright of the programs agreed by both parties will also make the subsequent development of the programs limited.

However, even if the distribution of interests divided by the 5th Five-Year Plan has gone far beyond the previous gains obtained only from the production fee and a few patch advertisements, the market-oriented space that can be operated by private production companies has been greatly enhanced. At present, this model has become a mainstream mode in which television stations with a relatively high degree of marketization and private production companies cooperate in important programs.

Five Problems in the Existing Separation Mode of Production and Broadcasting

1. Lack of program evaluation systems and standards, and incomplete evaluation rules

In the existing separation of production and broadcasting modes, most of the investors or producers make submissions to television stations, which have been approved by television stations. For income considerations, investors will often choose short, flat, and fast program types that can generate revenue. This will not only cause serious program homogenization, but also make it difficult to control the social benefits of the program. In recent years, singing and parenting The proliferation of programs can be seen. Although the market must fully consider the market response, television programs are cultural products after all. Their evaluation criteria cannot rely solely on ratings and returns.

At the same time, however, the broadcasters lacked a scientific and effective program evaluation system. Moreover, due to the fact that the channels within the television stations are often subject to block management and limited communication, there is also a lack of uniform evaluation standards among different channels, resulting in the selection and evaluation of programs. With strong randomness, it is difficult to really establish the quality price of the program, which makes the development of program innovation and separation of production and broadcasting lack sufficient operating conditions.

2. The identity of the investor is too single and the program financing is insufficient

In the current separation of production and broadcasting, in addition to the TV station's own investment and independent investment by some programming companies, the identities of investors are mostly powerful advertising agencies in some high-cost and large-scale production programs. Although the advertising agency company plays the role of an investor, it can make advertising investment more smoothly and has more advantages in obtaining advertising income for the program. However, there is a big problem in this over-singular investment subject identity. At present, even if it is a relatively single participant, the space available for selection is relatively small. The scale of these advertising agency companies is uneven and there are only a few companies with investment scales. Some large-scale production companies with investment capacity are also There are very few, and it is also rare to participate in the production and broadcasting of TV stations.

This situation has caused two problems. On the one hand, the habits of thinking and the size of funds of a few advertising agency companies and production companies may lead to lack of separation of production and broadcasting; on the other hand, the unique identity of investment entities also causes The source of input funds for separation of production and broadcasting is single, and the inadequacy of the absorption of social funds makes the funds for program production have a transparent ceiling and cannot make major breakthroughs.

3. Single source of income, diversified revenue channels are not developed enough

At present, the main revenues from the production and distribution of separated programs come from advertising revenue, and the extension of product development is far from sufficient. Taking the “China Good Voice” that has been operating to the maximum extent possible, for example, of the 400 million yuan in the first quarter, 350 million were from advertising, and only 50 million was from copyright sales. At the same time, TheVoice in the UK, relying solely on a Vodafone's placement ads and paid downloads on Apple's iTunes, to achieve a profit of 500 production team more than the Chinese production lineup, while in the Netherlands, the audience The subscription fee paid for watching “Good Voice from The Netherlands” through a third-party video website reached 43 million euros, equivalent to 339 million yuan.

The reasons for this difference are the objective factors such as the viewing habits of the domestic audience, but mainly due to lack of experience in the marketization of the program party, and insufficient development of diversified income channels. This type of income source is too single and excessively dependent on advertising revenue. The lack of marketization of production and broadcasting separation also in turn limits the process of marketization of production and broadcasting.

4. The copyright ownership of the program is not clear, and the program extension product development is limited

One of the difficult issues in the separation of TV programs is the attribution of program rights. On the one hand, in the introduction of copyrighted programs, the copyright of the programs is mostly purchased by investors or producers due to limitations in the system and financial strength of television stations. As a result, television stations as broadcasters are passive because they do not own the copyright of the original programs. Status, follow-up in the second quarter, third quarter can continue to broadcast on the same broadcast platform can not be guaranteed, may cause harm to the quality of the program. The best way is to buy the copyright from the broadcasting party. However, in the current situation, since the broadcasting of the program is at the channel level, the channel does not have the main right to purchase the copyright of the program, but there are many procedures for the television stations that have the main rights. Due to the low efficiency and insufficient funds, the copyright issue of outsourced programs cannot be reasonably solved.

On the other hand, according to the prevailing rules, local producers or broadcasters have half of the copyright in their localized programs or original programs. Although this kind of provision seems to be fair, it makes the copyright of a program exist in many forms. If there is not enough contractual restriction mechanism, it is very likely that copyright disputes will arise in the subsequent production of the program. In addition, since the main part of the operating program is the investor or the producer, the development of the extended product is also undertaken by the investor and the producer. However, since half of the copyright belongs to the television station, the producer and the investor want to obtain the authorized extension product. Development must also be faced with the problem of the TV station as a system with a large number of institutions and complicated procedures.

5. Unequal subject status, difficult market transactions

Broadcasters and producers have tangible and invisible differences in interest appeals, values, trading methods, and management mechanisms. The two will inevitably encounter contradictions and problems. However, at present, as China’s TV program market is still in the full buyer’s market, what is broadcast and what is not broadcast, the broadcaster’s TV station has the final decision, which results in the dominant position of broadcasters, investors and producers. The inequality in the process of separation of production and broadcasting made the producer and the investor’s bargaining power insufficient, and was in a disadvantageous position when it was agreed with the broadcaster. The transaction between the two parties can only be conducted under the premise of safeguarding the interest of the broadcaster. Producers and investors have to assume most of the risks in the process of separation between production and broadcast.

In addition to the subjectivity and uncertainty of judging program standards, it may still be difficult to form a fair, fair, and transparent market after the separation of production and broadcasting. This has also caused the complete marketization of separation of production and broadcasting to be difficult to achieve.

Feasibility Model for Separation of Television Program Production and Broadcasting

Based on the above analysis, under the current system of broadcasting and TV industry, we are trying to build a feasible model for separation of production and broadcasting:

First of all, the broadcaster establishes a separate department internally, which mainly undertakes the separation and separation of the programs. The department is responsible for collecting innovative program programs in and out of the station. According to the actual needs of each channel and the program type, the corresponding channel is recommended for reception. After confirming the broadcast with the broadcast channel, the department is responsible for the internal reporting and review procedures of the program. On the one hand, it faces open bidding for the production company and selects suitable investors.

Secondly, the investor and the broadcaster jointly set up a project company. The investor and the broadcaster respectively share the funds and the broadcast platform resources. The future earnings are distributed according to the double principle of shareholding and efficiency. The benefits include not only the economic income, but also include Ratings.
The project company is responsible for the entire operation of the entire program. Staff members are sent by the investors of the company's identity. Due to the limitations of the system, broadcasters can send supervision personnel to the project company to participate in project supervision. The project company looks for a suitable producer and signs a production contract with it, or the producer can also make a share in the strength. However, the main market of the program is only one project company, and the project company is responsible for various operations such as advertising, multi-channel marketing, and extended product development of the program.

This mode has the following features:

1. The broadcaster establishes a separate department responsible for the separation of production and broadcasting, and can establish a unified program evaluation system and evaluation criteria, so that all production and broadcast separated programs within a station can be evaluated under the same standard, and truly market standards and The market system conducts program selection and evaluation. Therefore, it is beneficial to discover innovative program programs, realize effective planning of a separate production and broadcasting program, avoid homogeneity of programs, etc. It can also solve the problem that TV stations have many layers and procedures are too slow and may affect the efficiency of market-oriented operations.

2. After setting up a project company for a program that is about to run, both parties will invest in their own shares. For investors, they can better guarantee their own capital efficiency, and for broadcasters, they can also ensure their own platform resource efficiency. Moreover, in the form of such a project company, the investor can have more than one party. Each investor can allocate shares by capital investment and determine the controlling party in advance. This method is more conducive to the absorption of socialized funds and thus avoids investment. The main body only uses the advertising agency or program production company's single trend.

3. Several parties established the project company in the form of shares. The clear ownership of the shares resulted in a relatively equal status of the parties and could change the situation in the past where the investment and the producer’s bargaining power were insufficient in all aspects of separation between production and broadcasting. Safeguard the interests of all parties.

4. In the model where the project company is the main body of the market, whether the copyright of the outsourced program or the copyright of the independent or localized program is owned by the project company. After the various operations of the project are completed, if the project company no longer continues to exist, the project company may also transfer the copyright of the program according to the agreement in advance and purchase it from the producer or the broadcaster or the investor. This makes the copyright ownership of the program clear, avoiding copyright disputes caused by multiple forms of ownership of copyright, and the inconvenience caused by extended product development caused by the ownership of copyright, and also defining the rights and responsibilities of the extended product development and marketing. This clears the institutional barriers to multi-channel revenue generation for programs.

5. After the project company as the main operation, the dividends of the program are conducted in accordance with the equity and benefits. Under the premise of protecting the equity, it can be allocated according to a certain agreement, with the economic efficiency and the viewing effect as a lever. That is to say, based on the input resources as the dividend basis, it also includes the actual economic benefits of the program operation and the viewing effect: the higher the economic efficiency, the better the viewing effect, and the higher the dividends the investor and the producer can get. Not only does it break through the existing dividend distribution model, but it also goes further than the dividend distribution model of good voice. It not only considers the effect of viewing, but also considers the economic benefits resulting from advertising revenue, extended product development, etc., and it is possible to avoid investors. Blindly pursuing the appearance of ratings, etc., and at the same time able to spur the enthusiasm of investors and producers to the maximum by sound market rules.

Of course, this model is not a solution to all problems in the current model. There are some issues that need to be considered in this model. For example, the cost of setting up the project company itself, the TV station in the system enters into the legal person qualification and policy permission of the project company in the form of shares. The project group or the project company has different sources of personnel, how to establish a more effective organizational structure, how to Good company operation and so on.