Donald understood these points very well, and he had no intention of deceiving Boss Huang. He frankly laid out the problems within and said, "Sir, if you truly want to make this television station successful, I still suggest you operate it like a traditional television station. Otherwise, you'll end up failing like me!"
"No, the current television operation rules are already outdated!" Huang He said. Seeing Donald's unconvinced expression, he asked, "Mr. Donald, if I operate according to the television operation rules everyone else uses, even if I invest a huge sum, can I possibly defeat the current five major television networks?"
"..." Donald fell silent. He had once believed he could achieve this, but countless facts had proven it impossible. Not to mention anything else, just a cable television network covering the entire United States was an impossible feat. The five major television networks were in league with each other; if they simply cut off the cable television signal, even a deity couldn't develop anything.
Unless Huang He intended to invest in building a new cable television network covering the entire country, which was obviously impossible.
"So we need to operate Los Gatos Television with a completely new approach, and this approach is the one Los Gatos is currently using. This is our only possible way to defeat the five major television networks!" Huang He stated.
"That's impossible!" Donald shook his head. "There are too many difficulties and problems that we simply cannot solve at the moment!"
"Alright, then list the problems and difficulties one by one, and I'll solve them for you on the spot!" Huang He said very decisively.
Donald was taken aback but didn't mince words. He immediately began, "The first problem is the issue of a vast amount of drama and variety show resources. How do we solve this? To satisfy the operational method you mentioned, even counting reruns, our single television station would need to prepare over 50 drama resources and at least ten different variety show resources annually!"
"This is the easiest to solve!" Huang He laughed. "Netflix is mine. Netflix has a lot of drama copyrights, which can all be transferred to Los Gatos Television for broadcast!"
"Besides that, I own a large number of drama and film resources in China. I plan to establish a dedicated localization team to adapt these Chinese drama resources into Americanized content!"
"Of course, foreign dramas are not easy to market, so I also plan to invest about 1 billion US dollars to acquire the broadcast copyrights of already aired dramas from American drama production companies... These drama copyrights are actually very cheap, but many viewers don't mind watching reruns, and even strongly desire to rewatch these dramas."
"I've had people calculate it, and 1 billion US dollars is enough to obtain copyrights for over 5,000 dramas. These resources should be enough for Los Gatos Television to broadcast for over a decade!"
"..." Donald was stunned by Boss Huang's generosity, spending 1 billion US dollars without batting an eye, as if the money wasn't money.
However, Donald wasn't one to give up easily. He quickly retorted, "These resources are only enough to keep the television station broadcasting continuously. This is merely a basic requirement for a television station. If our television station is truly to defeat the five major television networks, we must continuously produce hit dramas!"
"We don't need many. As long as we can produce one hit drama comparable to the old... The Big Bang Theory every year, we will have the hope of gathering a large audience and defeating the five major television networks!" Donald said.
"I understand that too!" Boss Huang nodded. "You might not know, but I also have Marvel Studios, US Tangren Entertainment, and Weta Workshop in New Zealand. These are all film and television resources owned by Jiangnan Group. In the past few years, over 10 films have been completed or are in production!"
"Next, I plan to transfer a portion of elite personnel from these companies to establish the Los Gatos Television production department. We can film the dramas we want to film ourselves, and we can also invest in other companies to produce dramas, and so on. We will spare no expense and go all out to create high-quality dramas!"
"In my plan, we will create one super drama with a total cost of over 200 million US dollars annually, five high-quality dramas with a total cost between 20 million and 100 million US dollars. At the same time, we will also invest in about 30 other dramas with no limits, solely based on the quality of the script. Do you think with such heavy investment, we will lack excellent content?"
Huang He's words made Donald lick his lips. He suddenly realized that if Huang He was truly willing to spend money like this, then in terms of drama content, they would completely crush the so-called five major television networks.
After all, these television stations had never invested in any drama with a cost exceeding 10 million US dollars, yet this new boss was starting with six dramas on the scale of tens of millions of dollars annually. This level of dominance was terrifying.
"Alright, let's not discuss the dramas themselves for now, but regarding the television station's program arrangement, I still don't agree with this program format of all dramas airing consecutively. This is actually not very viewer-friendly..." Donald said.
"You have a point here. Purely consecutive drama broadcasts can indeed make viewers tired. But you must admit that 60% of viewers don't want to watch news; they only like to watch dramas, variety shows, or some comedy talk shows. Serious news doesn't appeal to the vast majority of viewers!"
"Moreover, there are too many television stations currently producing all sorts of news programs. Every television station invests heavily in collecting and producing various news programs, but in reality, there isn't that much news in the world. Many television stations broadcast the same news, making such competition meaningless."
"So it's better to open up for differentiated competition, completely abandoning news broadcasts or not broadcasting traditional anchor-style news programs, but instead producing news talk segments similar to talk shows!" Huang He said.
"That's true! But it's difficult to reconcile these two points. The main issue is that the dramas you broadcast might not be favored by most viewers, and broadcasting dramas on a large scale can easily lead to issues like missing episodes..." Donald repeated.
"Alright, let's skip this point for now. We'll continue with other issues!" Boss Huang directly skipped it.
Donald felt a bit uncomfortable but continued, "The advertising issue. If we were to produce dramas according to the standards you mentioned earlier, just collecting the annual cable television service fees would likely not be enough to cover the exorbitant costs of drama production. But you've promised not to charge advertising fees, so I really can't imagine why you're doing this business. This is clearly a money-losing endeavor!"
"Let's skip this one too! Continue with other issues!!" Huang He skipped it again.
"This guy must be out of ideas!" Donald muttered to himself, but he obediently continued, "Finally, there's the issue of the cable television network. If we enter this market on such a large scale, the five major television networks will definitely cut off our cable television signals. We have no way to resist this!"
"Are there any other issues?" Huang He asked seriously after listening.
"No, those are the main ones. There are others, but they are not important and can be overcome," Donald shook his head.
"Very good. The reason I wanted to skip the first two issues is that these three issues can actually be solved with one method: changing our mindset, switching tracks, and not playing their game!" Boss Huang said with a smile.
"Switching tracks?" Donald was stunned. It wasn't that he didn't understand what "switching tracks" meant, but he didn't understand where this track was!
"The track is right here!" Huang He walked over to the television set in the room and unplugged the television cable.
Following this television cable, one would find that it wasn't directly connected to the cable television port on the wall, but rather to a box. Besides the television cable, another line extended from this box.
Following this line, one would discover that this network cable eventually connected to a computer.
"In the United States, most network cables are extended from telephone lines, right?" Boss Huang suddenly asked with a smile.
"That's right, most network cables are telephone lines!" Donald nodded.
To many readers, television lines are television lines, telephone lines are telephone lines, and broadband is broadband – three completely independent communication lines that do not affect each other.
But in the early 21st century, most cities did not have expensive broadband lines installed. Even the great United States would not see broadband普及 until after 2012.
Before that, network lines were generally used in conjunction with other two types of lines.
In China, these lines were telephone lines. Readers with good memory should recall that when you went online, you needed to use something called a modem connected to the telephone line, which constantly emitted a buzzing sound. This was the only way to access the internet at that time, and it involved separating network signals from telephone lines. This is why China's internet was initially operated by China Telecom, as all the lines were under their control.
But the United States was different. In the US, the number of people using telephone lines for internet access was relatively small. The lines actually used for internet access were cable television lines.
Because video signals needed to be transmitted, cable television lines had a very strong capacity for transmitting network signals, not much worse than early broadband.
And the US cable television network was deployed very early, so when their networks were built, they were basically integrated directly into cable television lines. Therefore, modems in the US were not connected to telephone lines, but to television lines!