The ambitions of mainstream media in short dramas go beyond just getting a share of the pie.
QuestMobile data shows that after more than five years of technological support and policy cultivation, as of February 2026, the monthly active user base of the short drama industry has reached 718 million. Last year, the output value of the micro-short drama industry reached 90 billion yuan. A consulting firm predicts that the market size of short dramas will exceed 110 billion yuan in 2026.
In this track full of opportunities and creativity, there is a newly joined "regular army" that is particularly noticeable. It is composed of mainstream media such as TV stations and financial media.
Although they entered the market relatively late, the "tactics" and advantages of this "regular army" in the micro-short drama market are quite different from those of traditional short drama platforms and production teams. Beyond traffic and capital, mainstream media and financial media are reshaping the track pattern with their highly professional content creation ability and the policy advantages of authoritative endorsement, and gradually becoming a key variable in the short drama industry.
Financial Media's Entry into Short Dramas: An Experiment on Breaking Through Circles
On the afternoon of May 21st, a live broadcast titled "The Trillion-Yuan Short Drama Track: Opportunities, Logic, and Future for Mainstream Media" was jointly hosted by the 21st Century Business Herald client under the Southern Finance Media Group, with the participation of Jiaxing Jiuzhou Culture Media Co., Ltd. and Entertainment Value Officer. During the program, the 21st Century Business Herald client announced the launch of a short drama section, initially offering users over 50 general financial short dramas.
"A young man rushed home in a hurry. When he got home, he saw his grandfather seriously ill and cried uncontrollably. Meanwhile, his parents beside his grandfather were winking and whispering, and told the young man that 'the only hope of your grandfather is for you to inherit the craftsmanship'. The young man immediately agreed, and then his grandfather suddenly recovered with a smile..." This short drama full of family warmth and comedic charm is "Getting Rich" in the short drama section of the 21st Century Business Herald. Colleagues from Entertainment Value Officer said that after watching it, they couldn't stop because of the light-hearted, humorous, and positive story.
Currently, a variety of short drama works with different styles and themes, such as "The Queen of Gold Mining: Love and Hate in 1990", "I'm a Contractor on the Moon", "Cat and Mouse Game", "The Boundary", "Back to the Yongle Encyclopedia", and "The Glory of the Judge", have been launched in the short drama section of the 21st Century Business Herald. The first batch of genuine general financial short dramas introduced are currently available for free viewing without ads, laying a foundation for user retention on the platform.
As a leading mainstream financial media, the introduction of short drama business by the 21st Century Business Herald reflects its operational layout of conforming to the new trend of "video-based" communication and enhancing video supply capacity. From the plays, we can see that financial media are trying to screen and introduce a batch of high-quality positive-energy works to expand the platform's offerings.
Leading financial media are actively developing non-news video product ecosystems, exploring the creation of a diversified video product matrix including financial micro-short dramas and brand-customized short films. They aim to form a full-range video product system with news videos as the mainstay and characteristic vertical videos as supplements, in order to innovate in enriching content supply and expanding user circles.
Actually, some mainstream financial media entered the short drama track last year and received certain positive feedback.
In January 2025, the The Paper short drama channel was officially launched, with shows including "Anti-Fraud Storm", "Master", "Go Beyond, A Juan!", "Happy Family", and "Your Island Has Arrived". By observing these works, we found that most of the themes are closely related to social hotspots, showing the struggles and growth of ordinary people from multiple perspectives, which resonates with the values and lifestyles of contemporary Chinese young people.
As an influential official media, The Paper has an advanced spirit of practice. In September 2024, it launched the "Drama Spotlight" high-quality micro-short drama co-creation plan. Since then, the media has been promoting the project of launching the short drama channel. After completing the relevant addition of the license for audio-visual programs transmitted through information networks, The Paper quickly launched the micro-short drama column during the Spring Festival window period in 2025. Currently, this column has been subdivided into nine sub-columns, such as Hot List, Free Viewing, Comic Dramas, Urban, and Ancient Costumes. The highest popularity of the short dramas has exceeded 23.32 million.
In addition to the financial media focusing on channel layout, Yicai also jointly produced the micro-short drama "Shareholder Comes" with the China Securities Investor Services Center, using light comedies to dissect real scams such as stock market swindlers, illegal stock recommendation, and over-the-counter margin trading. Through the publicity form of short dramas, the communication power of preventing financial fraud has been effectively improved, combining professionalism and entertainment.
Wherever the users are, the content supply will follow. Financial media use new audio-visual methods to retain young users and provide diverse choices for old users. A business person from a traditional media told Entertainment Value Officer that in recent years, the advertising revenue of various mainstream media has declined. The layout of the short drama track has become a new incremental entry point for content e-commerce, brand customization, and copyright revenue sharing, which is a good solution for diversified advertising income.
It can be seen that the vertical entry of financial media can first maximize their own channel advantages by testing the short drama track through copyright introduction. Customized dramas involve the exploration of professional vertical content, providing more possibilities for short drama content. In contrast, the micro-short drama industry is full of vulgar and homogeneous content, while the professional content of financial media just supplements the scarce professional themes in short dramas. Through their own credibility, they can achieve reverse content output to drive out "bad money" with "good money".
Micro-Short Dramas on TV: Reconstructing the Short Drama Ecosystem with the Professional Abilities of Radio and Television
The core of mainstream media's entry into the short drama track is not to compete with the short drama industry for traffic, but to take a differentiated path with their creative ability, copyright operation, and platform discourse power. Since 2025, nine provincial satellite TV channels have successively set up regular micro-short drama theaters, starting the "short model" to cultivate audience habits and enhance channel competitiveness.
Oriental TV's "Quality Oriental · Micro Theater" has broadcast 24 works, with a total viewership of 650 million; Hunan TV's "Daman Theater" has 19 works, with a viewership of 290 million; Anhui TV's "Dolphin Micro Theater" and Inner Mongolia TV's "Pentium Micro Drama" both have a viewership of over 100 million. Three vertical-screen dramas, "Reborn: I'm a Striker in the Scottish Premier League" (Jiangsu TV), "Micro-Vacation Is the Real Deal", and "Riding the Waves" (Oriental TV), have been aired on satellite TV channels and achieved good ratings. Among them, "Micro-Vacation Is the Real Deal" on Oriental TV has a total viewership of 3.1598 million; "Riding the Waves" has a viewership of 1.142 million, and its ratings are continuously rising, with comprehensive ratings better than those of the popular horizontal-screen micro-short dramas during the same period.
After the release of the China Media Group's micro-short drama ecological cooperation plan "See China in Micro-Short Dramas", works such as "Chinese Myths", "AI Views Classics", and "China Micro-Short Drama Festival" have been continuously launched. At the same time, China Media Group's video platform has launched the venture capital and integration media action for high-quality Chinese micro-short dramas, and added a "Micro-Short Dramas" tab page on the platform, taking a key "practical" step in building the "ecosystem" platform for the group's micro-short dramas.
The independent "Micro-Short Dramas" tab launched on China Media Group's video platform has a reserve of more than 1,000 high-quality micro-short dramas, and at the same time, it takes an open ecological route by combining "micro-short dramas +" with industrial venture capital, traditional culture, and the linkage of dramas in hundreds of cities. The first batch of launched works, such as "Chinese Myths", "AI Views Classics", "Sanxingdui: Revelation of the Future", "The AI in the Warring States Period in the Dream of Handan", "The Camera", "Strange Stories of a Carpenter", and "Chinese Solar Terms - The Spring Equinox Adventure", are well-produced. From theme innovation, content sentiment to emotional resonance, they have comprehensively improved the aesthetics and quality of micro-short drama creation.
Hunan Radio and Television has elevated micro-short dramas to the group's strategic level, launched the "Spark Plan", and even created an independent short drama APP. Based on its own entertainment advantages, Mango TV has produced a series of short dramas derived from variety shows and interactive micro-variety shows derived from drama characters. Two micro-short dramas, "The True Identity of the Brothers Who Cut Through Thorns Can't Be Hidden" and "The Village Flower Reboots Her Life", are derived from the variety shows "The Brothers Who Cut Through Thorns" and "Flowers in Bloom" respectively, and are very popular among fans. The high-concept adaptation of "My Fair Princess" is a second creation based on the classic old drama IP of Hunan Radio and Television, quickly attracting young audiences to become fans of "My Fair Princess".
It can be seen that traditional TV systems have extended from channels to joint production, joint filing, and joint broadcasting, sharing costs and risks with short drama production companies and enhancing overall bargaining power. Through the linkage of large and small screens, they break through the barriers between satellite TV and new media, and expand from the middle-aged and elderly audience to the young market.
Deep Dive into Vertical Categories and Ecosystem Integration: New Solutions for the "Regular Army" of Micro-Short Dramas
When the competition in the micro-short drama industry enters the 2.0 era, traffic gives way to work quality, and scale gives way to content barriers. The long-term value of mainstream media and financial institutions is being reflected in different dimensions.
First of all, we can see several obvious advantages of mainstream media entering the short drama track.
Endorsed by the media brand, the content is more likely to be recognized by users, regulators, and institutions. With professional content barriers that are vertically non-replicable, only mainstream media can provide accurate and professional content in vertical categories such as finance, current affairs, law, and investment education, thus forming a differentiated content moat. In addition, due to their familiarity with policies and regulations, they strictly control positive energy, real-life themes, and cultural inheritance, which conforms to regulatory guidelines, ensuring long-term content stability and avoiding the risk of being taken off the shelves.
In terms of commercialization, mainstream media first enter the short drama industry through channels, offer free short dramas through copyright cooperation, and then realize monetization through advertising revenue. In addition, based on the advantage of being closer to government needs, they can cooperate with the government to produce customized micro-short dramas for government publicity or conduct local characteristic publicity in cooperation with cultural and tourism departments. These are all commercial monetization paths for media production, which are more stable than self-produced short dramas.
Through observation, Entertainment Value Officer found that micro-short dramas are not a "side business" for the media, but a new infrastructure for mainstream communication platforms in commercial monetization. For comprehensive media, it is a means to reshape the audio-visual pattern; for financial media, it is an efficient carrier for the transformation of professional influence.
In 2026, the short drama market will exceed 110 billion yuan, directly surpassing the box office of movies by more than twice. With 700 million users spending an average of 129 minutes a day watching short dramas, the data outperforms traditional film and television. However, the homogenization of short drama content has gradually become a new pain point in the industry, with a large number of works falling into a routine cycle. After the era of wild growth ends, compliance, professionalism, high quality, and ecosystem will become the key words for victory. The "regular army" that can build trust with content, lock in users with an ecosystem, and achieve a commercial closed-loop may also gain a sense of achievement in the long-term short drama track.
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