Radar

Vertical drama decoded — analysis, predictions, experiments

7 briefs 47 companies tracked 1 active prediction

Open Intelligence

AI LAB 2026-04-05

I Spent $120 Trying to Make an AI Vertical Drama About Cats. It Was a Disaster.

$120, 6 AI tools, 90 seconds. Total disaster.

PREDICTION 2026-03-20

The Forbidden Dimension #2: The Vertical Invasion

A Big 5 will acquire a micro-drama app before end of 2026

118 days remaining

PREDICTION 2026-05-07

The Forbidden Dimension #3: Vertical Drama Tips Into AI

A fully AI-generated series hits #1 on ByteDance's biggest microdrama platform

CALLED Called in April 2026 — 'Bodhi Linshi' (60 eps, Seedance 2.0) took #1 on Hongguo, 800M+ views in under two weeks.

ANALYSIS 2026-06-25

The Forbidden Dimension #4: Vertical Drama's Fantasy Island

A map of the estate: the model everyone fears is only one room in it

ANALYSIS 2026-07-09

The Last Werewolf

The billionaire werewolf died by press release. The question is who inherits.

ANALYSIS 2026-07-27

The Chinese micro-drama factory crosses the border

Two American studios walk in the same morning — through different doors

INTERVIEW 2026-08-25

Gennadiy Fefelov, Vertical Drama Line Producer

60 episodes, 7 days, 25 people, $100–200k — and the month the orders stopped

RADAR 2026-09-04

The Format Is Leaving the Platform Before the Platform Notices

Kwai's KCL is the tell. A brand pays a flat fee, non-exclusive, no revenue share, for the right to run a mininovela episode — which means the vertical format has quietly detached itself from the app that made it legible. Same week, aTwist launches with Winograde, Rovner and Braun...

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Recent Intelligence

RADAR 2026-09-03

Rank Is a Lagging Indicator, and Nobody Fixed the Clock

Altarboy enters at #1 this week with 5.4 million views — the lowest view count in the entire top ten, by a wide margin. ...

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RADAR 2026-09-02

The Diaspora Is a Rounding Error and the Platforms Know It

JioStar's launch into the UK, Canada and Singapore is being sold as a diaspora play, but the Indian government's own cou...

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RADAR 2026-09-01

The Billion Is a Forecast Wearing a Fact's Clothes

Duanju's press machine wants ReelShort's 2026 billion-dollar mark treated as arrived, but the sourcing says otherwise: a...

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RADAR 2026-08-31

The Crew Is the Cost Center Now

Qidian Interactive, the Wuxi studio Sixth Tone spent two dispatches inside, didn't cut costs by making cheaper episodes....

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RADAR 2026-08-30

The Cheap Bet Is the Business Model, Not a Symptom

The CNBC line on Chinese short-drama economics — flood the market, let the clips decide, fund distribution only on what ...

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RADAR 2026-08-29

The Ranking Nobody Trusts Is the Only One That's Honest

"Found A Homeless Billionaire Husband for Christmas" sits at rank #8 on the ReelShort consumer chart with 466,860,270 vi...

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RADAR 2026-08-28

The Export License Is the Real Product

COL Group didn't go to Bangkok to sell content. It went to sell a template — talent incubation, localized production, di...

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RADAR 2026-08-27

Distribution Is Eating Production

COL Group and CP Group staged their Thailand alliance at ContentAsia Bangkok as an industrial story — an incubation prog...

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Premium Intelligence

🔒 ANALYSIS 2026-03-15

Hollywood pivots to vertical drama — and it's more political than creative

Why Hollywood is playing defense, not offense

8 studios · 12 deals · 10,000 words

March 2026: Google, Disney, NBCUniversal and Lifetime pile into the Chinese format they dismissed six months ago.

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Analysis reserved for Streaming Radar subscribers

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🔒 ANALYSIS 2026-03-10

The pick-and-shovel sellers of the vertical gold rush

When an app burns $1 on UA, who actually profits?

6 ad networks · $26B market · follow the money

When a mobile-drama app burns $1 to acquire a user, who actually pockets it? Spoiler: not the app.

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Analysis reserved for Streaming Radar subscribers

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The Big Picture

Vertical drama is no longer a niche, and it is no longer a paywall. China has swung from pay-per-episode to free and ad-funded, AI now writes and shoots a large share of the output, Beijing has put the billionaire CEO under notice, and the open question is which purse buys the genre that replaces him.