Feature Shows Extravaganza

Chapter 30: The Premiere

Translator: Henyee Translations

Editor: Henyee Translations

Meng Lang had no knowledge of what had been going on in Japan.

He would be more than a little frustrated if he knew that Pengda had become “Company P” to the kids.

Company P?

Would they become “Plutocrat P” one day?

The abbreviation of Pengda was PD, and if one shrank the D and moved it to the lower part of that P… Well, that made it a B for “big”.

Luckily, Meng Lang knew none of it.

The premiere of Balala the Fairies had attracted much attention.

Not only were the young audience who had watched Blazing Teens looking forward to it, but many professionals wanted to see the new show as well.

They still remembered the casting incident when Balala the Fairies started shooting. That director, who had given his verdict at the very start that Balala the Fairies would never gain popularity, was keeping an eye on the first episode as well.

The TV professionals were there as happy onlookers.

If that director was right and Blazing Teens had only become a hit show out of sheer luck, then they would cancel all plans of making feature shows themselves.

After all, the fame that first show gained could have been an accident. But if two shows in a row became popular, then this genre really had a promising future.

If Balala the Fairies became popular, that meant that Pengda Pictures had revitalized an old genre. The others would join in to share the cake, as well as enjoy watching a certain director eat sh*t on live-stream.

That would be the best outcome.

The worst case scenario would be if Balala the Fairies hit a stone wall on the first night without any obvious rise in the viewing rates.

With the unusual popularity of Blazing Teens, if Balala the Fairies turned out to fare less than satisfactory, there would be only one explanation. That was, Blazing Teens had only gained its popularity out of sheer luck…

The CCTV-14 paid a lot of attention to the premiere of Balala the Fairies as well.

Starting from a week ago, they began to “set the mood” for the show on their own platform using precious advertisement periods.

Although it had only been a week, CCTV-14 had a much larger audience base than most provincial TV channels.

One week was more than enough!

During the time, the loyal audience of CCTV-14 would all know that a new show would start from the first day of the new lunar year.

The animation time started at 6 in the afternoon.

With the melodious opening tune, a brand new animation title scene appeared on the screen.

Balala the Fairies used some animation scenes at both the beginning and the end, so as to demonstrate the features of the toys better. For instance, there was a 360-degree showcase of the Fairy Crystal Necklace at the beginning!

Then, there were the opening and ending themes.

Meng Lang had hired some famous music professionals to create the opening theme of Balala the Fairies and Pengda had the complete copyright of the song.

The ending theme was much simpler. Meng Lang didn’t have that much money to make another original song, so he bought the license from an existing piece, made some new lyrics, and hired a teenage girl to sing it.

The interlude songs were made the same way.

Meng Lang wasn’t the only one using that method; most of the production companies did the same thing.

The reason was simple: it was cheaper this way.

Creating a good song from scratch was so expensive.

An original opening theme was alright, but if all the music of the show was made that way, the cost would rise significantly.

Of course, that was common knowledge for low budget soap operas. For big budget works, the cost of original music was nothing compared to the salary they paid for the popular young actors.

As a matter of fact, unless the production company was really loaded, the theme song usually was the only original piece for most of the shows, and that was already considered a very sincere move.

If the theme song of a show was an existing piece, then its production company was either too poor or had no respect for the audience at all.

And if the show turned out to have a big budget…

It would be drowned in spit.

It could happen. If a major production couldn’t spare some money on an original theme song, then the money would be spent somewhere else.

Such as the salary of some good-looking young actors…

Meng Lang knew about this costume drama that had been broadcasted recently that was supposed to be a 50 million production. They had hired the current most popular male and female idols, and after bombarding the media with its promotion campaign, the viewing rates turned out to be pretty good…

However, they had purchased an existing ancient-style song and used it as it was. Afterward, they did something even more baffling; they had the original singer remove the song from the music app, then add “theme song of so and so” after the name before putting it back on the shelf again.

That was a common practice in the line of work nowadays.

A show would hire the most popular actors or actresses to ensure high viewing rates. However, such actors or actresses also came with high salaries as well, which would take up a large chunk of the budget.

What would the production company do about that?

They would have no choice but to save the money elsewhere.

That was why some hit shows would have bloopers in their props and cheap-looking special effects.

The audience didn’t care about such details, anyway.

Meng Lang was very decent in that aspect. Despite the limited budget, he made sure he had the best costumes, props, and music that his limited money could afford.

The only downside was that there were no big names in the acting crew.

But that was normal for feature shows. They didn’t need famous actors or actresses. As long as the story was good, the kids would buy it.

It was very different from the adult audience.

Balala the Fairies was an above average feature show. That was the conclusion many people reached after the first episode.

With the spectacular Fairy Castle, the special effects of the dark magic Moon Fairy used when she stole the Colorful Fairy Stone, the pretty sisters, the funny party where the Fairy Treasure Box scared the female shop owner from stealing chips in the middle of the night…

Halfway through the first episode, a lot of kids had already fallen in love with the fairy world.

Yan Lili and Blue Fairy then made their appearance, distinguishing the good fairies from the bad.

Both parties were pretty girls, which alone was enough to attract a lot of viewers, not to mention that they had the “magical” factor.

Meng Lang had the purchasing personnel of all major children’s channels around the country on his Wechat contact list. The moment the first episode was over and the advertisement started, he sent a message to CCTV-14.

“The number’s still coming… Be patient.”

Compared to Jiangchuan Children’s Channel, CCTV-14 was a whole different story.

Jiangchuan Children’s Channel only needed to calculate the viewing rates on the city-wide TV network. After all, not many people outside Jiangchuan would watch the channel.

But CCTV-14 was one of the best children’s channels that covered the entire country. Its viewing rates were probably higher than some of the provincial comprehensive channels.

Because of that, calculating the viewing rates had become a rather difficult task.

Meng Lang only had the rough figures after the second episode was over.

The man on the other side told Meng Lang that there were some discrepancies between this number and the actual one. After all, they had only counted all the third-tier cities and above.

Remote and rural areas hadn’t been accounted for.