In recent years, with a one-to-five-minute intensive narrative and debris-based consumption characteristic, micro-fellow dramas have prevailed in China and overseas markets. Short video platforms, such as tremors and fast hands, are also increasing the follow-up to the industry, and the development of AI technology has led to a much simpler and shorter production process for micro-short plays, creating a market of billions of dollars in just a few years.
However, low production costs and early high-speed growth inevitably pose a range of problems. Some of the dramas have led to content-oriented controversy due to the routing of dramas, the loss of a cultural nuclei, and the marginalization of vulgarity, which exposes micro-fellows to the double test of reputation and compliance in the “flow raging”.
On 18 August, the National Radio and Television Directorate issued a series of initiatives to further enrich television screen content for the provision of free television content, which will provide a clear direction for the development of the content of the wide television and radio industry, with a view to promoting high-quality development of the industry and better meeting the spiritual and cultural needs of the population, in a multidimensional manner, including content-building, management optimization and ecological improvement.
A number of initiatives were launched by the National General Directorate of Radio and Television, which injected a “strength of heart” and a “calibration machine” into the development of micro-short dramas. “Encouraging support for good micro-shorts into television broadcasting”, which explicitly integrates micro-shorts into the free-air content-supply system, recognizing their market value and potential for cultural dissemination, is a well-known industry and will also drive the transition from “wild growth” to “precision”.
In terms of content-building, emphasis is placed on “renewed content” “enhanced content innovation” , which requires micro-feature creators to jump out of the primary model of “Hunting + AI” and dig into positive values and good Chinese stories. For example, work that combines traditional culture with real-life issues, is both innovative and ideological. At the same time, “Improving content review, optimizing mechanisms and increasing efficiency” will provide space for innovation by regulating the review process, both to remove downplay and non-compliance and to avoid “one-on-one” killing, and to guide micro-short plays in exploring pluralist expression within a compliance framework.
With the support of the policy, it is hoped that the mini-show will lead to the development of a two-channel TV screen plus web platform. Access to television broadcasts means reaching a wider audience, attracting previously under-covered groups such as middle-aged and low-markets, expanding the influence of industry and forcing creators to improve the quality of production, aligning with aesthetic and quality standards for television content, and addressing the current problems of rough images and dramas.
From the red-hot of the Ai shorts to the new rules of the radio, the micro shorts stand at the crossroads of the “Breath Circle” and the “Regulations”. In the future, it is only through a policy-oriented, sustained and deep-drinking process of content quality, technology, and value transfer that this new business will truly become an important force in the delivery of content on television, telling the story of a new era and achieving a win-win between traffic and rhetoric.
