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Hong Kong pop star Edison Chan in the poster for Blind Spot. Provided to China Daily
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As the government steps up its fight against piracy, the number of China's video websites has decreased from about 300 to only a dozen. The price of licensing a local show has increased accordingly - by tenfold to as much as 1 million yuan for a hit show.
More pressure comes from the fact that a TV show is usually licensed to multiple online platforms, so it's hard for a single website to maintain audience loyalty.
So its more cost-effective for video websites to produce their own programs, a task even more urgent after traditional broadcaster Hunan TV launched a new-media platform called Mango TV to carry its own shows.
The notion that Internet-produced series can be widely accepted by Chinese audiences gained credence with Diors Man, a Sohu.com production that parodies pop culture and topical social issues with cheeky humor. The show's three seasons have been viewed more than 700 million times.
After adopting a "dream works" strategy in 2013, Sohu will reportedly invest twice as much this year and aims to raise the view counts of its self-made content fourfold. The content will include full-length plays and reality shows made by local talent and top South Korean production teams.
Youku Tudou said it will invest 300 million yuan ($48 million) in making its own programs. Tencent Video is planning joint efforts with the country's top production companies to adapt the most popular Web fiction into 500 episodes of Internet plays.