Next month Tudou’s first made-for-Internet original production “That Love Comes” (欢迎爱光临) will launch on our site. It’s the first production that comes out of our Orange Box initiative, our plan to produce several series based on what our Chinese audiences like to see and made with only the Internet in mind.

The Orange Box idea came from the fact that the kind of shows that you see on Chinese TV are not very interesting for a younger audience. That’s why many of our viewers go online and watch shows they like on video sites, and many of these shows are Korean, Japanese or Taiwanese. We have observed this while we were growing Tudou.com over the past years and now decided that if nobody produces these shows in China we will do it ourselves. Of course in this way we also can further differentiate ourselves from the competition, with strong, relevant and unique content.

As mentioned the shows are made for the Web, but now already several TV stations (both in China and abroad) contacted us to license the shows for non-web usage as well. The first run will be only online but after that the shows may run on TV as well. It’s turning the world around, so far TV shows would air at a later stage on the Internet (in China actually some shows air at the same time on TV stations and on video sites), but now Web shows might move to the TV screen.

Although producing shows ourselves is more expensive than licensing shows we feel it is worth it. Not only does this offer us the opportunity to differentiate ourselves once again from the competition, but also we have more ways to recoup our costs. Instead of having pre-loaders and other advertising as main revenue drivers for our content, we are now able to also use product placement and script placement in the series. Being able to integrate brands into the story line is of course very attractive to brands focusing on a young, urban audience with a high disposable income (Tudou’s core audience).

Although doing our own productions is new, we are quite confident that this will be a success. There are no other video sites in China (nor in the West) that are getting into original content production on the scale and level of dedication that we’re working on. There are some variations of  “original production” initiatives out there, but mainly in the form of joint funding or a production investment by the video sites who in return will own some or exclusive rights in broadcasting and licensing deals. We are taking it to the next level, working on a content production business that generates our own IP next to our two other areas of strenght: video distribution and the Tudou Film Festival.

More detailed information & trailers of the series:

• You will soon be able to watch That Love Comes @Tudou, check out our special page for the show here.
• For more information about That Loves Comes and the Orange Box idea, see this interview in English on TudouChina.com.
• During the shooting of the show (starring among others Joseph Cheng and Li Fei’er) we took some pictures and put them on the Tudou Flickr page, you can see them here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tudoudotcom/sets/72157624418284735/
• Trailers of That Loves Comes you can see here (from the female perspective) or here (from the male perspective). The voice-over is roughly saying something like “There is someone in the world, waiting. If you start believing in love at this very second, That Love Comes”.