Last week was a great week for C-drama fans with the release of three new big budget popular leads dramas with different tastes for viewers. In the week since the buzz meter has spoken and it’s modern drama Only for Love with the highest viewership followed by second chance revenge drama Story of Kunning Palace and enemies turned lovers battlefield romance Wonderland of Love in the third spot. All three are eminently watchable to varying degrees but I sense that OFL would not be as popular without Dylan Wang being the male lead and Bai Lu continues to deliver hits now with two of her own dramas competing against each other and still holding on to top spots. Zhang Ling He is getting better reviews in Kunning playing the antihero dark and cunning rather than his last two dramas My Journey to Love and Love Between Devil and Fairy where he was the sweet nice guy. My personal crack is Wonderland of Love and overall I’m just happy for a November with so many dramas to watch.
Only for Love is tanking so hard on TV that it proves once again that the watered “data” on the web doesn’t mean anything. Fake data, fake successes, over and over again. And then they wonder why fewer and fewer people watch cdramas. Oh where are the old times gone? Jeez I wonder! How about people got sick of fakery and are watching better shows that are either kdrama or western.
Is it airing on tv? What’s the rating?
Around 0.2
Wow that’s a disaster
I don’t know what rock you live under but the audience for Cdrama is growing not reducing. Apart from the fact that China itself has over 1 billion people who watch Cdrama there is a large audience outside the country that is addicted to Cdrama. Their presence in the luxury fashion world is also growing as more and more C celebs are being promoted to Global Ambassador level. Xiao Zhan and his campaign with Gucci is the biggest campaign for any Asian celeb in recent times. No Korean celeb apart from Blackpink and BTS have had such major campaigns for luxury brands. Diliraba is just as popular as Jisoo when it comes to Dior and brings in insane traffic. The number of Cdrama on Netflix is also constantly growing. It hasn’t reached Kdrama level not because Cdrama doesn’t have the same reach but because the Government gate keeps their content. Recent Kdrama that “do well” on buzz ranking and Netflix ranking is also water data. It’s all fake because no Kdrama is actually that popular apart from Squid Game. Fans pretending that their faves drama ranking on Netflix means anything are lying to themselves. It’s all fake data.
You should probably not talk out of your ignorant behind
The audience in China is reducing every year. The once great numbers are long gone. Once upon a time, 3, 4, 5 on Datawin was all doable. At best there is a 3 on very rare occasions. This year nothing passed that. Never mind higher.
One of the most talked about problems in cent is the so-called frozen market. Smh stop talking if you don’t know anything.
Crazy Xiao Zhan fans sure are something.
Here’s something that’s going to blow your mind. The world doesn’t revolve around him. Chinese audiences have been watching cdramas less and less and it has been a steady decline since 2018.
I have yet to see Xiao Zhan’s campaign taking center stage for a global brand where the season only have them as the main model & have his face plaster all over the world for the season, so I can’t compare him to the likes of Jiso(Dior), Jenny(CK, Chanel), Rose(YSL), JUngkook(CK),Jimin(Dior) ect. XioaZhan to me isn’t near their level of fame yet in the global stage. Western just don’t know them. Even LuiYiFei & YangYang were left out of Bulgaria’s last major promote in groups photos. The focus was more towards Lisa, Anne, and zanday. China fans were upset.
It’s a risk, to have China star. One wrong move and their government boycott them or the world boycott them (if their government force them to post stuff that upset the rest of the world). LYF’s post really effect Mulan. So I agree w/ you that it’s their own government limiting their artist and the diverse story they could have told. It’s a shame.
Funny you mention fashion campaigns when the topic is about c-drama audience and honestly speaking Xiao Zhan’s dramas this year didn’t do all that great neither in China nor internationally in comparision to his old drama like The Untamed or even other hit dramas from 2023 like Mysterious Lotus Casebook, Lost you forever or previous year hits Love like the galaxy, Love between fairy and devil. Fashion resources have nothing to do with c-drama market or how well someone’s dramas are doing.
@Ed
Menghai did great. It broke 2 in ratings and overall, an average of 1.56 CVB in the month of June, during the entrance examinations. I don’t know how much you know about China but that was a really big deal. It can be seen that it breaks 1 even now easily and it’s a rerun for 12th(?) time. It’s why it’s being rerun so many times, people are watching.
Sunshine by my Side was average and nobody really knows what The Longest Promise did considering the huge suppression by Tencent’s new management. But disregarding these two and sorting them as average doesn’t lessen the big success of Where Dreams Begin.
@Ed
Mysterious Lotus Book CVB 1 = a hit
But
Sunshine by my side CVB 1 = a fail
And
Where Dreams Begin CVB 1.55 = a fail
How does that work, exactly?
@Lee, while C-ent celebrities’ collective popularity is still not par with with K-ent counterparts in general, Xiao Zhan is one exception. Both being global ambassadors for Gucci, Xiao Zhan is indeed given much more prominent commercial exposure than New Jeans Hanni. It can be seen from several special editions housing Xiao Zhan only for Gucci commercials while there’s only one so far for Hanni for the Milan Fashion Week early this year when Xiao Zhan was also filmed for a similar clip. But after that MFW, Xiao has been shot with numerous special commercial editions by Gucci and he’s the only Asian face presented on the recent cover page of Gucci after they had a shakeup within the executive management. XZ is also the major global ambassador for Tod’s, Zenith, Nars, YSL, and the most recent endorsement on Boucheron among other luxurious brand names. His name has been in the news from international fashion media and luxurious goods for a while.
I won’t be shy of boasting of XZ’s endorsements on luxurious brands, when comparing with Kpop idols since they are on par in terms of popularity and commercial values now. You can’t dismiss China’s domestic market where there’re around 1.4 billion people and top 1% of the wealthiest make a great deal for any brand names. LOL
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calm down, lmao 😂, as long as it doing well in one platform is enough, don’t be stressed about it lol. Web Data is for young people who no longer watch TV.
Web data is for fake views. Which is why when they released its Douban score it was 4.6 and only 28k people rated it. Nobody is watching this.
So not many people are watching this… what would be good raters amount?
@Yuhyi
If you take a look at the real hits, you will see numbers with half a million votes and way up.
You are my glory has 480k, I went and checked and even some not so popular ones in China had around 120k (Love is sweet) or 140k (Forever and ever).
But like I said, the real stuff is about half a mil or up. Mysterious Lotus casebook from this summer has 545k for example, Lost you Forever has 370k. Older actual hits have crazy numbers, Untamed has 1.7 million. We don’t have to go so high up but consider they are claiming this is a hit, then at least reaching around 300k should be normal. Instead you can see the numbers. It’s true there is time but let’s be honest, it’s not happening.
The reason Cdramas’ web data get so many hoohas is because their web data charts aren’t reliable. There is no official authority tracking a drama’s web views unlike TV ratings which is tracked by CVB. Numbers released by MGTV, iQiyi, Youku and Tencent can easily be rigged and the numbers they released are not views but rather ambiguous words like heat index. Other third-party charts have also been found to be inconsistent and biased, for example, Drama A scored number 1 on Chart X but Drama B scored number 1 on Chart Y instead.
So, whay are the TV ratings for Only for love? Imo, it is pretty bad but I can totally buy it is a big success on the web: by episode 2, we have already watched Dylan dress, shower, work out. For absolutely no reason, plot-wise! 🤣🤣😍
No CVB ratings for Only For Love because CVB only keeps track of dramas which airs during the primetime 19:30-21:50. Only For Love’s airing time is 22:00
@Lilith
Ratings exist even if CVB isn’t announced. This trash is at around 0.2
@So what I didn’t bother checking Kuyun as CVB is the only authority for TV ratings. If a drama’s not airing during primetime, its ratings doesn’t matter much at all.
I understand what u mean, chinese audience seem to have different ratings system for their shows,with different platforms n am not going to bother my head about.As I said before watch the show u enjoy, the fact that a show has negative reviews across board doesn’t some others r not loving it has much
Yup, always decide by yourself by watching the trailer and the first few episodes to see if it’s interesting for you.
Nonetheless, it matters for actors though. Brand names do look at these popularity ratings to consider potential candidates as their celebrity spokespersons or ambassadors. That’s why there may be ppl buying water data to inflate a popularity index.
Even rating data are reliable without inflation or deflation due to deliberate manipulation, there are caveats to each statistic measure. It’s not transparent what kinds of information is factored into statistical summaries. The ratings will end up differently based upon different assumptions and methodology to summarize statistics. At high levels, it may be true certain dramas are more popular than others. But whether a rating measure fairly showing a drama is a hit or just reasonably popular is controversial. Popularity measures are nebulous.
I was giving my professional opinion above since that’s my turf.
For example, here Koala said that Dylan’s modern drama leading others in viewership trailed by Zhang Linghe’s costume drama. It’s not clear to me which rating measure she is based upon since Dylan’s drama is on TV and ZLH’s drama is a web series. It’s like comparing orange to apples unless there’s a integrated rating measure to include both TV channels and online streaming combined. So far, the only C drama viewership measure with TV and web combo is Ky.live. For my fave’s dramas, I usually follow Ky.live for viewership updates and VLinkage for the degrees of popularity (online discussions etc.) There’re still referencing values to these two sets of ratings. I take other ratings less serious.
@Lilith
Of course they matter, only people who dismiss them are those who aren’t happy about their faves. LYX is broadcasting at night and it’s going fine. So why can’t this do well if it’s so great? Lol stans are fun.
@Lmao Name me one Chinese drama in the recent 5 years which aired after prime time and had done well? And stan who? Did you think I’m defending this drama? LOL I dropped it after 3 episodes. It doesn’t matter how much I like an actor or actress, I’ll drop a drama if it isn’t interesting to me.
@Lilith
LYX Love is Panacea is doing fine, even when we look at the second episode without the CVB (first episode is hovering around 1), if you want something broadcasting now.
@Eh Love Is Panacea didn’t air after prime time although it is near the edge.
I’m up to ep.5 for KP, and it has been a rough ride, with this horrible use of flash backs almost every minute, definitely a good way to tell a story. I’m still intrigued by the revenge plot though, and will try my best to continue, lol.
Anyone interested in revenge drama can check out Faithful, recent period revenge drama headlined by Wu Qian, but it is really an ensemble cast effort. Very good use of flash backs and plot reveal in this drama.
Hi there! May I know where you’re watching Faithful on? I’m intrigued and would like to check it out too but can’t seem to find it where I am. Thank you!
It’s on IQiyi.
Faithful was really good.
I don’t know what the hoopla here is but I am personally loving both Only for Love and Kunning Palace….I have no complaints from Dylan Wang or Zhang Ling He….I love them both in their roles.
the male lead in Only for Love has evil, scheming, mean, perverted, and creepy eyes.. scary looking.. was it makeup to make him look like that
November is definitely a treat. I’m still watching SOKP, but will definitely need to check out the other 2 dramas also.
Only for love isnt my cup of tea. I quit watching it. It’s just plainly boring.
Kunning and Wonderland are not bad. I like them so far.
Anyone watch Go Fast On Trust? I enjoy watching it. For a modern drama, it’s not too much.
wonderland gets better and better with each episode. Jing Tian makes Xu Kai very watchable.
I am hooked with SOKP ,it’s really good.I can’t wait for next episode and I am loving Bai lu and ZLH as the dark anti hero. As for OFL it’s like a really a bad web drama and plainly boring
Only for Love the male lead has creepy looking eyes and Story of Kunning Palace the male lead looks like a vampire especially when he is kissing her, like he’s going to suck her blood
Only for love is not a typical love story there is some reason why the story is like that for me the best drama ever the flows is smoothy until you Will find to understand is why like that why in mangotv they have reach turning 2M views now in kissians and viki they popular so how can douban rates like that and they surpassed all those drama had been airing same date with them. As you can see in yt they are trending each episodes.