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Are mangoes not afraid of red fruits?

2026-11-12 X5H 編輯部 34 min read

Source | Bohu Finance (bohuFN)

Author | Travel expenses

When the Internet is immersed in the debate about byte time, the variety show “The Friendship Period” produced by Mango Super Media (hereinafter referred to as “Mango”) stands up and shouts “We are all younger brothers.”

According to Yunhe data, on November 8, the effective broadcast market share of “Later Friendship Period” in the variety show category was 47%, while the data for “Let’s Go Now Season 4”, which is also an S+ level variety show, was 17%. “Later Friendship Period” has single-handedly boosted the Q4 variety show market. The promotion line for S+ level variety shows has been raised by 390,000, while the other S, A+, and A level promotion lines are all falling.

In addition to variety shows, “Later Friendship Period” has become the savior of the value of long videos. 999 Cold Spirit, whose tears were wiped by Qingzhi, soared on the spot, and the number of viewers in a single live broadcast room exceeded 200,000; Juewei Duck Neck, which has been forgotten like Li Na in recent years, also experienced the feeling of being “sold out”; of course, the biggest gainer was mango, which rose for 6 days in a row from November 2 to 9, with a cumulative increase of 60.54%. The total market value increased by about 25 billion yuan. Although the revenue is only 45% of that of Station B, Mango’s market value is 35% higher than that of Station B.

It is worth mentioning that “The Friendship Period” is not an unexpected surprise for Mango. In October this year, in addition to “Friends After”, Mango also had 5 variety shows that ranked among the top ten in effective broadcast market share, namely “Heart Signal Season 9”, “Flowers and Boys 2026”, “Hello Saturday 2026”, “Escape Room Season 8” and “My Girl 2026”.

Does this mean that Mango has found a new growth path for long videos in the new era of short dramas to divert attention?

01 The genes of the old man

Although we often compare “Aiyou Tengmang” together, the background color of Mango is very different from the other three.

If the three “Aiyouteng” companies are large-scale platforms driven by Internet capital and rely on massive amounts of copyrighted content or heavily self-produced dramas to compete for users, their model is more similar to that of Wangfei; then Mango is a profit-making platform with profound “TV station genes” and self-produced variety shows as its absolute core.

The content production experience accumulated by Hunan Radio and Television over the years has brought two significant advantages to Mango.

One is mature content production capabilities.

Content for other platforms still needs to be purchased from outside, but Hunan Satellite TV has long accumulated mature variety show production capabilities, including but not limited to program planning and creative research and development, directors, screenwriters, producers and production teams, lower artist invitation costs, etc.

For example, emotional observation variety shows like “The Friendship Period” did not appear out of nowhere. Hunan Satellite TV has been involved in it for a long time and is constantly iterating. From the early “Metamorphosis” and “First Grade”, to the “Wife’s Romantic Journey” and “Goodbye Lover” a few years ago, to today’s “The Friendship Period”. The Wenhai team responsible for “The Friendship Period”, its chief director Zhao Wenhai, was a member behind the scenes of Hunan TV’s variety shows “Metamorphosis” and “First Grade”.

These directly give Mango TV the competitiveness of its own content. According to Sina Entertainment, a project with a large amount of engineering work to execute like “Beyond the Troubles” has a team of thousands of people behind it. The Hunan Satellite TV + Mango TV dual-platform variety show team has as many as 50 people.

Second, Hunan Satellite TV and Mango have the communication advantage formed by mutual backflow.

Hunan Satellite TV has always been one of the domestic entertainment centers. According to data from Soochow Securities, from the mid-2000s to the mid-2010s, Hunan Satellite TV maintained its first place in the provincial satellite TV ratings rankings for nine consecutive years.

For example, if a variety show is broadcast on Hunan Satellite TV, it can gain concentrated exposure on the TV side; if it is launched on Mango TV, its life cycle can be extended through member viewing, program derivative content, interactive topics and social communication.

This is equivalent to combining the communication advantages of traditional television with the user operation capabilities of the Internet platform.

On the one hand, these have laid a stable foundation for mango. “Heartbeat Signal”, “Flower and the Boy”, “Escape Room” and other N-generation movies have controllable costs and continue to provide stable attention to the platform.

On the other hand, it also makes Mango more market acumen and more daring to try new topics. Sina Entertainment reported that there will be weekly reporting meetings within Mango. There is no need to prepare complicated PPTs. First, explain the program clearly in one sentence. After the first round, then explain how to do it in detail. If everyone thinks the idea is good, but investment is blocked, try a few small-scale projects first.

In other words, only Mango is willing to give the production opportunity to a program like “The Friendship Period” that has no traffic or the participation of big-name artists.

Therefore, when the industry enters into stock competition and user stickiness, Tencent Video and iQiyi, which have larger user bases, are in a more difficult situation. Mango’s net profit attributable to its parent company in the first three quarters was 213 million yuan, which is at least making money.

02 Join even if you can’t beat him

However, compared to its dismal peers, Mango is not much better.

First of all, the model of relying on variety shows to promote user payment and advertising has a ceiling.

On the one hand, from the perspective of the user pool, Mango’s user portraits are extremely focused, and they are young women who pursue emotional concentration and resonance. This naturally limits the number of paying people. According to publicly disclosed data, both iQiyi and Tencent Video have around 100 million members, while Mango’s 2025 figure is 75.6 million.

On the other hand, judging from the results, the comprehensive N generation cannot stably gain the favor of advertisers. According to a report by Caijingtianxia, ​​industry insiders said that in the first half of 2026, more than 50% of the top new variety shows will not have a named brand, and the proportion of “Variety N Generation” without a named brand will also reach 30%. As the spread of hot topics becomes increasingly fragmented, brands are taking advantage of the trend faster, with more participants, and homogeneous content continues to dilute consumers’ attention. The instantaneous explosive power of hot spots is still very strong, but the marginal benefits of ordinary brands following the trend may be declining.

These factors combined with the impact of AI short dramas made it possible that even though Mango Variety Show performed well in the first half of the year, its financial data was still unsatisfactory.

The semi-annual report shows that Mango’s Internet video business revenue was 4.462 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 8.61%. Among them, membership revenue was 1.933 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 22.56%; advertising revenue was 1.684 billion, a year-on-year increase of 6.11%; operator revenue was 845 million, a year-on-year increase of 5.62%.

Carrying the banner of growth depends on content e-commerce. In the first half of the year, Mango e-commerce revenue was 1.100 billion, a year-on-year increase of 146.35%. However, content e-commerce is a low-profit business, with gross profit of only 6.16%, which is far lower than the 23.54% of the Internet video business.

Therefore, Mango has fallen into the dilemma of “increasing revenue without increasing profits” this year. In the first three quarters, Mango’s operating income was 9.351 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.18%; net profit was 213 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 79.01%, and the profit scale was the lowest in the past five years. With a revenue of 9 billion yuan, the net profit in a single quarter was only about 200 million yuan, 2.32 million yuan and 11.55 million yuan.

In order to break the situation, Mango also began to place its hopes on AI. On August 31, Mango released the AI ​​drama “Journey to the West”. Cai Huaijun, chairman of Mango Super Media, revealed that the total cost of “Journey to the West” has been reduced to a fraction of that of similar S-level live-action dramas; the full season has 30 episodes and each episode is 40 minutes long. Compared with traditional three-dimensional animation, the cycle from planning to launch has been compressed by 70%.

Management also said that the drama brought a group of new users to the platform, especially male users, which exceeded expectations.

Obviously Mango is trying to use AI to change the cost curve of drama production, thereby making up for its shortcomings in user coverage.

03 Write at the end

The growth curve of Hongguo’s short drama this year shocked everyone. The daily activity of 168 million has exceeded the four parent video platforms combined. The debate over byte time actually discusses the allocation of user attention to different applications.

What AI gives is equal rights in content production.

According to a report by China Entrepreneur, some insiders said that production itself is now light enough that one person can bear it, and production units are shrinking faster. The production crews that used to require the collaboration of dozens of people are beginning to be replaced by individual creators and light institutions. The director of the State Administration of Radio and Television revealed in November 2026 that nearly 550,000 micro-short dramas had been launched in the first 10 months of that year, of which more than 94% were AI dramas. Based on this total estimate, the average monthly online volume of AI short dramas in the first 10 months was approximately 51,700.

However, despite the inflation in content supply, the reasons for users to stay have not changed significantly.

The most fundamental reason for the popularity of “Friends Later” is that the strong emotional concentration of “Flying Snow” CP and other CPs moved the audience; at the same time, the trend of AI short dramas is also obvious. In the first half of the year, more than 220,000 new AI short dramas were launched on the entire network, and only a thousand of them were played over 100 million. The peak completion rate dropped from 42% to 19%, and the average daily viewing time of users fell by 23% simultaneously.

Whether it is movies, variety shows or even short plays, its value lies in allowing participants to experience the lives of others intensively in a short period of time. The value of long videos still exists, but for platforms, they need to adapt to the new era and produce valuable works in a faster and more efficient way.

Reference sources:

1. Entertainment Manager: Why Mango TV, Li Na?

2. WEEKLY in the financial world: Soaring 25 billion, Li Na takes flying mangoes

3. Detawen Technology: 2025-2026 Drama Series Market White Paper

4. Golden Horn Finance: Mango is going crazy, Li Na

5. Chinese Entrepreneurs: The short drama is fierce and the cards are shuffled three times｜Cover Story

6. Miaotou APP: Mango wins again?

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