Chapter four hundred and ninety-ninth belated apology
Winning "Chang'an Twelve Hours" is just a small step for Rocket Video. There are still many mountains to climb and conquer in the future.
Zhang Yida didn't expect one TV series to completely make Rocket Video popular, he was still laying the foundation.
iQiyi should be considered the number one player in the industry at present. According to its prospectus some time ago, it has 60.1 million paying members. This is also because it has long recognized the important role of high-quality content in expanding the scale of paying members.
From the release of the self-made IP adaptation "Tomb Raiders" in 2015 as the first test of the charging model, to the exclusive broadcast of "Descendants of the Sun" in 2016, the platform attracted nearly 5 million members.
In the past three years, iQiyi has been developing better and better. Although it is still suffering serious losses, the market is still optimistic about its potential to become China's "flix".
With the help of various resources of the group, Penguin Video also announced in February this year that it had 62.59 million paying members.
Among Youai Tengzhong, only the number of members of Ali's Youku Video is a mystery, and it only appears in Ali's financial report as a euphemistic expression of "year-on-year growth in daily paying users."
Youku announced in 2016 that it had reached 30 million paid members. Then at the end of last year, an employee who was the head of Youku’s membership team leaked the news: The company was internally sprinting towards the 20 million member goal.
I don’t know if Youku is deliberately paralyzing its enemies with false news, or if Youku has been developing for nearly two years, but the number of members has dropped by 10 million.
However, according to a report by the research department of a securities company, the broadcast data of Youku TV series is not as good as iQiyi, 50% of Penguin Video, and the variety show is only 20% of Penguin.
Basically, it can be inferred that Youku has gradually declined, falling from the first place in the industry to the third place.
Behind Youku, there are also Mango TV, Sohu Video, and PPTV owned by Suning, chasing after them.
However, most people believe that a skinny camel is bigger than a horse, and the second echelon should not be able to threaten Youku for the time being.
But since the launch of Rocket Video, it has spent a lot of money to buy copyrights, and has invested in content production companies, self-produced variety shows, and online dramas. Many people feel that Youku is in danger and may not even be able to maintain its third place in the industry.
There are many reasons for Youku's decline. Some say Ahri's expectations for Youku were too high.
Youku is considered to be the most important content carrier of Ali’s entertainment sector, more important than other Ali literature, sports, games, film, music, and UC.
But Ali has never been clear about Youku’s status. Is it a content platform or an e-commerce diversion platform?
In addition, Qiandu and Penguin can provide traffic entrances for their respective video websites, which happens to be a major weakness of Ahri.
Last year, Yu Yongfu, who was the head of Ali Entertainment at the time, once made a bold statement: "How did Youku get pulled from the number one position? We must use the same method to return to the number one position."
However, two months after he set the flag, he was transferred from Ali Entertainment.
Before him, Ahri Entertainment had changed its generals several times.
Therefore, some people attribute the reason why Youku and even Ali Entertainment have been unable to compete in the entertainment industry because of unstable management.
Yang Weidong, the shift leader after Yu Yongfu, launched a bold and radical content strategy and unlimited content investment, and achieved good results in a series of variety shows such as "This is Street Dance".
But Youku's upward momentum came to an abrupt end here, and Yang Weidong was taken away by the police.
What happened in February was delayed for two months and has only been exposed now.
The incident quickly became a hot topic on Weibo, but was quickly taken down.
Ahri can control his own mouthpiece, but he cannot control self-media platforms such as TikTok, Kuaishou, Tiantian Toutiao, WeChat official accounts, etc.
All these platforms are spreading the incident and conducting in-depth follow-up reports.
"What crime did Yang Weidong commit?"
"Why did Ahli wrongly accuse Zhonghe Group?"
"If you have a dirty butt, you'll beat Zhonghe Group with a rake. It's a modern version of the farmer and the snake."
…
If you come out to fool around, you will have to pay it back sooner or later.
Ahri has always been a domineering person, and he always gets a warning letter from his lawyer.
There are many people in the industry who can't stand them, so someone revealed what happened on New Year's Eve.
Ahri employees posted reports on the professional social networking section of Bole.com, a subsidiary of Zhonghe Group, and Ahli's lawyer warned in a letter that Zhonghe Group called the police to prove their innocence...
Someone made a comprehensive presentation of various news from two months ago and the grievances between Ahri and Zhonghe through pictures, texts and videos.
Zhonghe Group did not end directly and provided traffic support to these smart creators.
Each short video with millions of likes tells the story of Zhonghe Group’s grievances and Ahri’s domineering strength.
Most netizens expressed sympathy for Zhonghe Group's experience of taking the blame. On the night of New Year's Eve, a scapegoat flew over and they even issued a lawyer's letter warning them. Who could they ask for explanation?
Someone suggested: Ah Li should apologize to Zhonghe for helping you uncover Shuo Shu, but he was still framed.
The background music configured on DouShi also completely became a hit on the Internet: You are making something out of nothing, secretly making things up, imagining out of thin air, fabricating out of thin air...
The Divine Comedy spread very quickly, and it was also accompanied by the meme "Ari framed Zhonghe Group". Basically, hundreds of millions of netizens knew about it.
At Zhang Yida's request, Zhonghe Group remained silent on the incident.
After all, for a victim who is complaining everywhere, how can it be so shocking to have hundreds of millions of netizens complaining on your behalf?
Ahri's public relations department also rarely remained silent. After all, they were aggrieved this time and did not dare to speak out rashly for fear of causing greater public controversy.
You know, Huang Xin and Zhang Yida are often dissed by Ali's public relations department.
Some netizens went to Ahri's public relations department's official account to ridicule him. Aren't they usually very talkative? Why are they mute this time?
Ahli was silent for two days, and finally firefighter Fan Luyuan spoke out through Weibo.
First, he admitted that Ali Entertainment’s mistakes and improper handling of matters had caused great reputational damage to its friends and businessmen.
Then he expressed his apology for what happened to Zhonghe Group and expressed his gratitude to all netizens for their concern.
A eloquent article with a sincere tone makes it hard for people to make mistakes.
Zhonghe Group also responded: Thank you to all netizens for speaking out for justice in this incident, and we also accept Ali Entertainment’s apology.
Zhang Yida gave up as soon as he saw the situation was good. Let Ah Li lose face once and let Zhonghe gain the upper hand in public opinion. That was almost the limit.
It is simply unrealistic to think of defeating Ahri or causing any major impact through such small things.
However, it also left a deep impression on the public: Ali Entertainment is seriously corrupt.
In the future, when the melon-eaters sign up for membership, they will think about it, is it so expensive, will it be corrupted? Is it worth it? Even if the effect is achieved.
Penguin and Qiandu also played a role in fueling the incident. Once there is any opportunity to suppress Ahri, they will never let it go.
For Ahri, the principle is the same. Only when one goes against the other can one gradually expand the advantage until the opponent is completely defeated.