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Early the next morning, fans and viewers who cared about the ratings knew about Monday's situation for the first time.

In the evening screen zone of the United States, Friday and Saturday are the worst time for drama programs, and Saturday has the worst ratings, and the average 9 million viewers on the four major broadcast networks can become the ratings champion, but they can only rank outside the 60th place in the year. The best schedule is Thursday, when there are more than 60 million viewers, and nearly 20% of the U.S. is watching TV, not including other pay channels, sports channels, local channels, etc.

Thursday featured a number of popular series, including CBS's "CSI," which averaged 26 million viewers; NBC's pillar "Friends" has an average viewership of 22 million people, etc. followed by Monday, the total viewership can also be about 55 million.

Supposedly, there should be nothing to say about this Monday's ratings, if the media would have only done some routine coverage of "Monday Football Night" in the past. But this Monday suddenly had a lot of topics to discuss, and that naturally belonged to "Prison Break".

The average viewership of the first episode of "Prison Break" was 8.9 million, and by the second episode it had jumped to 10.8 million. This is definitely more than expected. Another important indicator, the ratings of adult viewers aged 18~49 also reached 12.5%, which is very popular with young audiences, especially office workers. This metric is especially important because the question of purchasing power is often the first factor in the consideration of advertisers.

After Min Suyuan got this data report, she immediately asked Hu Yifei to report the good news. But when she knocked on the door lightly, she found that the door was open, and she shouted, and there seemed to be a faint response from inside. When she walked in in surprise, she was immediately stunned. The living room was littered with messy laundry, all the way from the door to the door. I didn't even have time to close the door.

Stunned, he hurriedly walked out.

After a while, Zhou Yan and the others also seemed to get the news, and they rushed over, and she hurriedly stopped the other party. "Mr. Hu hasn't gotten up yet, so it's not very convenient."

Zhou Yan was surprised, before they discussed their work, they went in and out at any time, Hu Yifei treated his subordinates very leniently, why is it now...... Then he was immediately stunned, because a blonde girl walked out of Hu Yifei's room. turned out to be the popular female star Scarlett Johansson, "Oh my god, I should have gouged out my eyes." ”

"Hey, Hu told you to go in." When passing by, Scarlett even greeted them in a friendly manner, so she gently put on her sunglasses and left.

The average viewership of the two episodes reached 9.85 million, which has not yet exceeded 10 million. This rating is not too high to say that it is high, because there is definitely a gap with CBS's ace show. But to say that it is a failure, it must be nonsense. CBS responded immediately and contacted Hu Yifei after urgent discussion.

As far back as he remembers, "Prison Break" debuted on FOX on August 29, 2005, and its debut episode averaged about 10.5 million viewers, setting the highest Monday viewership on FOX since September 1998. In contrast, the current CBS has popular dramas such as "csi", "Entering Love Raymond", "Two and a Half Heroes", and its inertial ratings are all above 10 million, can the 9.85 million results satisfy CBS......

At this time, the CBS management was also nervously negotiating.

Whenever a TV network books a new drama, it will be a huge gamble. Television networks spend millions or even tens of millions of dollars on high-risk ideas, hoping that viewers will come back week after week. Sometimes this money is spent right, not only can it gain popularity and word of mouth, but also make the TV network make a lot of money; Sometimes the money went down the drain — not counting being scolded by viewers, and the networks had to pay out of their own pockets to make up for the losses.

The plot of "Prison Break" is full of details and very tight, and it seems that there is no intention of unfolding a side story at all, which is both natural and tense, and without those ads, he would be out of breath! Americans have watched so many TV series, including tense and exciting dramas and light-hearted and funny sitcoms, but so far I have not seen such a heartstring-tugging, unprotracted but exciting and suspenseful drama series. And "Prison Break" was filmed first after the TV of the main season, and then it was promoted, and the plot behind it maintained the same rhythm as now, this is definitely the kind of TV series that the audience can never leave after watching half an episode.

But the first episode of 8.9 million is a little low, but the second episode has seen a significant increase, which is a word-of-mouth effect. What price should be set in order to make the TV network earn more, this is what they need to consider.

"What, the average ratings of the two episodes reached 9.85 million, you guys are still too low?" Andrew Korus, the head of CBS's drama department, called, and Min answered the phone, "It's too risky, you're only willing to offer a price of $500,000?" It's impossible to achieve, Mr. Andrew, and if you're in that way, I don't think there's any need to talk about it next. ”

"No, no, no, the price of $500,000 is already very high, setting a new record for the purchase of Chinese TV dramas in the United States. And with all due respect, your TV series is extremely inexpensive to produce, and it has been broadcast in Asia for a long time. We're only in the Nth round of screenings, and this price is already a lot of money for you. ”

Hu Yifei beckoned, asked her to hand over the phone to him, and said, "Andrew, if you have an attitude of charity, then I can only say that our fate is over." After all, "Prison Break" can't get into the eyes of CBS, and I think NBC or FOX must be very interested in "Prison Break", so I can only try my luck. ”

"What?"

Andrew frowned, "The Chinese we have signed a contract with, you can't sell to anyone else except us." And CBS has previously spent a lot of money on publicity. ”

"yes, I remember that the contract seemed to say that you only had the right of first refusal under the same conditions."

The opposite side frowned fiercely, covered the microphone and urgently conveyed the situation, this Chinese is not easy to deal with. The manager waved his hand and motioned for him to back down. Andrew nodded and said, "Okay." How much do you want? We're also going to buy the rights to the adaptation and the rights to the subsequent seasons. ”

Hu Yifei said: "The copyright can be sold, and to be honest, if it is changed to the United States, there are still many things that can be added." For example, black and white race wars, election issues, drug dealing, etc., I can even make references. But this price has to be raised to 2 million per episode. ”

There was another commotion on the other side, 2 million episodes, excluding the two episodes that had been tested, there were 20 episodes, that is, the cost of 40 million, which was too huge for them to bear. But the black-and-white war and the shady election plots proposed by Hu Yifei made them feel excited. After all, this drama takes place in China, and no matter how popular it is in the United States, it only occupies a little more novel elements. If you change to the United States, you will definitely feel different.

After some haggling, he finally bought the entire season, as well as the sequel and adaptation rights for $35 million.

The good reputation of "Prison Break" and the explosive ratings of the second episode helped a lot, and their CBS official website is now almost ruined by the excited lads, and it is clear that "Prison Break" has won a group of enthusiastic fans, which is to promote the show for free. (To be continued.) )