Western TV Hits Are Big Draw for Online Viewers — and Advertisers — in China
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While Americans shell out for Netflix subscriptions to see the second season of “House of Cards,” Chinese audiences watch it for free on Sohu.com’s online video platform. In China, people just have to view 20 seconds of commercials for Infiniti and Crest before the opening credits roll.
Episodes of the political thriller’s second season have had 14 million total views since Sohu put them online a week ago, simultaneously with the U.S. Other U.S. shows are even more popular in China: Zombie drama “The Walking Dead,” airing on another platform, Youku, averaged more than 13 million views per single episode in the third season.
Though there’s plenty of pirated content floating around the Chinese internet, Sohu and Youku Tudou have paid for the Chinese rights to dozens of foreign shows. They bet that viewers would choose non-pirated options if they were convenient, and that platforms could draw in advertisers if viewership was good.
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