Jiro Wang and An Yuexi’s Rakshasa Street which started its run in the beginning of the month was the first premiere out of the bunch. It has the highest numbers thus far, reaching 1 billion views on Youku now that the show has aired a little more than half of the entire series. Nonetheless, its headstart is not the only reason that the show is doing well as it has already hit 300 million views within its first week.
lET’s Shake It premiered less than a week after Rakshasa Street. What’s interesting is that it is also headlined by An Yuexi who takes fantasy to another level by playing a UFO opposite rising actor Zheng Ye Cheng. It’s not pulling in the greatest numbers, but it has a wacky premise that manages to stand out on its own, hitting 500 million views on Youku as of yesterday.
Perhaps the most successful one so far is the highly-anticipated Monster Killer 2 that brings back the demon-hunting gang led by Elvis Han. The show hit 100 million within the first 30 minutes and seems to be adding a hundred million views per day to hit 400 million accumulated views on Sohu and Tencent QQ by the fourth day of its premiere. To think that it’s only on its first week!
To see how these numbers stack up against network dramas, The King’s Woman which received a lot of hype due to the pairing between Dilraba Dilmurat and Vin Zhang has also earned 400 million views on Youku as of today (it is also on its first week). It’s a strong showing that is comparable to Monster Killer 2 though the numbers aren’t rising quite as fast. Nonetheless, it is a network drama which should explain why views would be split amongst people watching TV and online.
Xuan Yuan Sword: Legend of the Han Clouds which stars Leon Zhang, Guan Xiaotong and the rest of the Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms alumni like Alan Yu Menglong, Vengo Gao and Daisy Dai Si airs on another channel that is in direct competition with The King’s Woman. Its online views just hit 300 million on iQiYi this week and to put this to perspective, it really isn’t all that great considering that the show has been airing for two weeks already (it premiered a day later than lET’s Shake It).
At the end of the day, numbers are still just numbers, and I’m going to stick with my current fave.
Sunny
Thank you for the report.
I was watching one of the videos on the Chinese drama vlogger Avenue X's Youtube channel recently and she thinks some of these download/viewing numbers are exagerrated to hype the shows up. What do you think?
Anne J
Thanks for dropping by to read:)
And what? If it is true, then that's messed up. Is there any basis for it? And if it's being done across the board then it kind of defeats the purpose since everyone's numbers would be inflated. In that sense, I guess it'll still be a good gauge of which shows are doing well and which are not… I should go check out this youtube video, quite curious now, it's first time i'm hearing about this theory.
Anonymous
This is a common speculation but there are laws into place to prevent that. As far as I know it is very highly regulated by SARF and if any alteration is found the online website gets a big penalty. Maybe at one point when online views started being used it wasn't as regulated but nowadays they really monitor it closely.
Now, are some fans brushing for views? Yes. This is when they refresh the page to increase views on purpose. You see in music videos in youtube all the time. The determinant for the view to count usually requires viewers to sit through ads and a few minutes of the episode. If you view the ad then the company gets a revenue so they don't care if you saw 5 minutes versus 45 minutes of the episode.
It is expected that artists with a large younger fandom get higher numbers, but I think brushing only gets you so far. The drama needs to be popular for the big numbers. I have to say I think online views is a pretty good estimate of popularity among younger audience. While TV ratings show popularity among general audience.
Anonymous
I forgot to add that the reason this is a common speculation is that fans of artists whose dramas don't do as well as expected in online views use this as an excuse. This is pretty much the go to comment for competing drama fans. "Ohh their ratings are fake, etc." Just how some fans like saying that TV ratings are stolen.
I personally highly doubt companies are willing to upset SARFT or get penalized by them.
Sunny
@ Anne J: It was just a passing comment she made in a review for a drama (I think the review was for Princess Agents).
@ Anonymous: Thanks for explaining. I didn't know it was so strictly regulated but it's good to hear it is so I guess the numbers are pretty reliable then which is good to know.
Anne J
Good to know it's real numbers. But lol I think even if it wasn't and everyone 'added' a million to their numbers, we'd still get a good gauge of which shows are doing better.
Anonymous
Yeah, I agree which is probably what happens with the whole brushing thing. It is a pretty good gauge of popularity. At one point there was probably some concern of manipulation and that is why SARFT passed those laws. In the end popular dramas with younger audiences do good in online views while dramas with good tv ratings also get high online views since people are curious about it or want to catch up.