The research library
The industry, in context.
Follow a question from the story to the screen, the production company and the audience. Connected reading paths keep headlines, evidence and interpretation in sequence.
From the beat to the finished frame.
Seven worked guides for writers, directors and production teams. All teaching scenes are explicitly fictional.
- Build the cliffhanger backwards from its answer. ↗
- Use the opening three chapters to move status, not just plot. ↗
- Shoot out of order without losing the story’s small truths. ↗
- Treat portrait subtitles as picture-critical. ↗
- A three-actor room needs a power plan before it needs more coverage. ↗
- Adapt a scroll by tracking what the reader knows, not by copying every panel. ↗
- A trailer is a promise. The episode file is a contract with continuity. ↗
Make the evidence usable.
Seven practical guides to audience measurement, receipts, offers, forecasts and release records.
- Retention cohorts: count returned viewers, not just installs ↗
- A revenue waterfall is not a revenue headline ↗
- The delivery matrix that prevents a territorial release surprise ↗
- From announced slate to delivered show: a due-diligence checklist ↗
- Observe an app offer without inventing a price comparison ↗
- Reconcile market forecasts before you build a slide ↗
- Adaptation provenance: the metadata trail before rights talk ↗
Understand the form
Definitions, story engines and a framework for close reading.
Follow the business
Measurement, access, production economics and the companies behind the screen.
Read across borders
Regional evidence, audience research and the work of localisation.
Track rights and change
Documented deals, labour, rights, history and testable questions about what comes next.
Follow the deal to delivery.
Eight dated briefs track capital, rights, production and distribution while keeping announcements separate from results.
- Hartbeat takes a 20-plus slate to aTwist. ↗
- Vidio gives ReelShort an Indonesian subscription window. ↗
- COL and CP connect training, remakes and distribution in Thailand. ↗
- Sweetz enters France with a €1m-plus seed round. ↗
- Peacock opens a mobile window for ten ReelShort dramas. ↗
- Sony builds a 60-part vertical around La Llorona. ↗
- Versant joins GammaTime’s Series A without naming a first title. ↗
- Play Media’s 20-title slate enters the international sales market. ↗
How the landscape took shape.
Retrospective dossiers on documented platform decisions in 2022–2025. Event dates are preserved; these are new local drafts, not old publications.
- iQIYI put two short-drama theatres inside a subscription. ↗
- TV Tokyo’s BUMP plan made a broadcaster-platform handoff visible. ↗
- FANY :D’s launch plan joined three companies. ↗
- LINE VOOM made short drama a named contest category. ↗
- BUMP announced a 100-country rollout with three initial focus markets. ↗
- DMM placed vertical dramas inside its premium video membership. ↗
- Fuji Television launched FOD SHORT with five originals. ↗
- BUMP’s U.S. move included one vertical and one horizontal original. ↗
- G.H.Y proposed a Singapore–China short-drama bridge. ↗
- BUMP’s 2023 funding note exposed the business behind the cliffhanger. ↗
- FlexTV and TopReels attached a Korean partnership to a US$10m fund. ↗
- Lezhin and UniReel framed webtoon IP as a short-drama pipeline. ↗
- VERZA TV launched a U.S. vertical app with an 80-title opening claim. ↗
- GammaTime paired a US$14m seed round with a U.S. micro-drama launch. ↗
A source is a beginning.
These 44 field notes and 8 news analyses separate documented facts from interpretation, estimates and scenarios. The original research package remains preserved in a separate local review room, with its datasets and correction report. Archive inclusion does not mean a claim has been verified.