The company brought its experience to the production of The Voice of China, which has been aired on Zhejiang TV since mid-July. So far, the show has dominated Friday nights, with a 4.6 rating at its peak. Though many reproductions have had dismal performances, the success of Got Talent and The Voice of China seemed bright enough to build local producers' confidence.
"Since Got Talent, Chinese producers have seen the real value of format purchase. After The Voice, more TV stations and production companies started to buy foreign program formats," said Xu Yang, general manager of Shanghai- and London-based program format broker IPCN.
"Everyone is looking for the next Voice and Got Talent."
IPCN, set up by former ITV executive Mick Desmond, has so far licensed more than 10 foreign formats in China, including Got Talent, The Voice and Sony Pictures Television's The Sing-Off. Its business has expanded to online platforms since the launch of a local version of Banijay Entertainment's Date My Car on IQIYI.com.
Rebecca Yang, CEO of IPCN, has said that nowadays you have a better chance of getting away with edgy formats in less mature markets like China than in the developed ones like the UK. But, like what used to happen in other fast-growing format markets such as Russia and Malaysia, the craze for foreign formats is only "a phase of blind worship," Xu added.
Hu Zhengrong, vice-president of Communication University of China, remains optimistic about what he thinks is "an inevitable learning phase before China has a mature TV industry".
"As in every other industry, buying technology is a way to quickly lessen the gap. If they started buying formats 10 years ago, when TV was still a more powerful platform than the Internet, the industry could have been a lot more mature now," Hu said.
"But no hurry. There are so many program formats in the West, they still have a lot more to learn."
Chinese producers used to duplicate a foreign show by copying its every detail in a new program. But it didn't work well because the producers got only superficial experience that way. By buying the right to use the format, Zheng said, they have a chance to gain a full measure of production experience in addition to learning from the concept editing done by the original channels. The producers are usually given a formula, which they call the "bible". This offers guidelines on production processes, some as detailed as where to place a camera and how to switch a scene.
But even with this imported technological support, many reproductions in China are far from successful. Most have had mediocre success, earning less than a rating of 1 - far from satisfactory, considering the reported millions of yuan Chinese broadcasters have thrown into the purchase.
Canxing Production Publicity Director Lu Wei thinks the reason is obvious: The atmosphere and tempo of many programs are far from ideal, and it's definitely a problem with their technical production.
"The program format itself is not omnipotent. If the local production team is not well trained, the final result won't be good. What the bible offers is simply a framework of ideas. You can only effectively apply it after you think out why they are doing it so," Lu said.
"After all, it's a matter of how hard and quickly you can learn. You have to know what exactly other people are good at before you create something new to overpower them."
With such devotion to learning, Lu said Canxing has trained a high-level editing team while producing the Chinese version of Got Talent, which has become the first huge success in the reproduction genre. The show reached 600 million viewers and had a whopping 5.91 rating in its Sunday primetime slot on Dragon TV in July last year - in China, shows with as little as a 1.3 rating are usually seen as hits.
The team had two of their innovations included in the latest issue of the format's bible, according to Lu. One is adding a live voting session by media representatives across the country. The other is giving more importance to personalizing the contestants. Both have contributed to the success of a talent competition in a Chinese cultural context.