Big plans for the small screen

• Source: Global Times
• [13:32 July 06 2010]
• Comments

Screenshots of Joseph Cheng (left) and Li Fei'er from Welcome, Love. Photos: Courtesy of Lu Yang

By Huang Xi

Online television series are nothing new, but some exciting recent innovations by the industry's top guns are paving the way for a higher-quality, higher-profile and even interactive content for web-weary netizens.

Foreign websites like Youtube.com and other video streaming sites have been making their own original online sitcoms and drama and China's giants are rushing to offer their share.

In the recently completed 16th Shanghai TV Festival last month, Tudou. com, one of the first video websites in the country, promoted its upcoming original television series Welcome, Love.

With participation from celebrities like Joseph Cheng, Pu Xueliang, Pei Bei and Li Fei'er and with Taiwanese producer Su Limei who produced You Are My Destiny and director Ke Hanchen from The Outsiders as well as several other well-known media personalities, the online show was the center of attention at the festival.

And surprisingly, there is innovation to be found in what seems like an already flooded market

Joy.cn, a leading video website in China, launched more than 20 interactive television series in May, in which viewers can make choices on behalf of the character, a type of Choose Your Own Adventure online show.

Joy announced that it was the first video website on the Chinese mainland to present the "brand-new" type of interactive online series.

"We have a professional team to produce this content according to our users' viewing habits," Wu Qi, the director of the website's Joke Channel told the Global Times.

Seven, the most popular interactive sitcom on the Joke Channel played by the Back Dorm Boys, has earned 400 million clicks since it was launched in May, which is equal to the record-breaking television series Dwelling Narrowness on the same website.

However, with innovation comes controversy. Many viewers are not willing to accept this new system, displaying just how trial-and-error the field has become.

The plot is more complex and the performances are more professional than the user-generated content, but the interactive settings are provoking a lot of complaints.

"It is a real pain to choose where the plot will go every minute," said a regular viewer from Shuozhou, Shanxi Province, echoing the opinions of many others from around the country not warming to this medium.