As many of you may have noticed, we have lost quite a few licenses to the competition lately. “Ruler: Master of the Mask,” “The Best Hit,” and “My Sassy Girl” are all exclusives on the other site. Before them, many others. And not only from TVn but now from MBC, KBS, and OCN.
Even non-exclusives like “Duel” have not been licensed here. The latest exclusive announced by the other site is “Bride of the Water God.”
Now I wonder, does it have to do with not enough requests. For example “Duel” has very few people following the channel. Did many send the request? Is that why is not here, even though is not an exclusive with the competition?
Some people here believe that sending requests is a waste of time and others think is important. I fall in the latter. I do think it is important for Viki to know that there’s interest in a drama. They are, after all, spending money on a license.
I’m sending requests to Viki daily! Someone wrote in the discussions, that Viki will count multiple requests as one, basing on the IP adress. Which is kind of unfair, there are families with one IP, but several family members, who watch on Viki and send requests for different dramas. Because we have a dynamic IP I send the requests daily and hope they count each time.
And I don’t know, if the number of followers display the number of requests and if the number of requests even has any influence on the license. Whisper for example had few followers at the beginning but got licensed weeks ago, The King loves, too.
Other dramas, with many followers didn’t get the license, even hyped ones. I don’t understand the license politics of Viki. As a profit-orientated company they should keep an eye on the upcoming dramas and on the needs of the viewers. It’s nice to get older dramas licensed, but please! The viewers, who pay for the viki-pass want to see the latest and hottest dramas! The early bird catches the worm, but Viki must be a “slugabed” missing all those great dramas. Whoever is responsible for the licenses - wake up, please!
I’m getting really depressed. I had such a high hopes that we would have a Bride here… I’d like to hear any explanation from the Viki staff, we may be volunteers but it’s a matter of respect to tell us if they are going to close this site or how we should understand the fact that they are paying money to get some random youtubers here although it’s been a month since we have gotten and license for Korean Drama. “Duel” and “Lookout” aren’t even exclusives on the other site, why Viki doesn’t have it here?
Have you seen that Viki has got a new CEO? http://worldscreen.com/new-ceo-at-viki/ It makes me wonder what caused this sudden change. And I don’t like what the new CEO said, I don’t want any “innovative new models” and we don’t need to be taken “to the next level”, we would like things to be normal again, eh…
It’s fine to be innovative but not at the expense of your core programming and what got you to where you are. I have also been disappointed at the lack of new dramas that we’ve seen lately. A lot of the good dramas on-air right now are not here. The three I’m watching are elsewhere. I prefer to watch on Viki but I have no choice if I want to watch dramas like “Ruler”, “Circle,” etc.
And with the license requests, I do wonder if they matter or not. I used to think they did but I’m not so sure anymore. “Bride of Water God,” I’m sure is gettings tons of requests sent, but at least for the license for the Americas, it didn’t matter. It’s an exclusive at the other site, maybe because of their agreement with tvN. I guess having had “Chicago Typewriter” gave us false hope that we would get more tvN dramas.
“Reunited Worlds” & “School 2017” are the next two dramas to premiere in July (“The King Loves” does as well but that one is licensed), we’ll see how we do with those two.
In the unlikely case that a family has more than one member who is a drama addict, it would be unfair to count one IP.
But the COUNTLESS cases in which viki users passionate to see their favourite drama just turn off their router and on again, to get another IP and masquerade as a different user to trick viki into thinking there are many many requests for that drama, are fair?
Hmm…
On another thread I’d made, asking viki about requests (yes, that was me), they answered, quite reasonably, that requests are only one of the many factors they consider while requesting a license.
I suppose cost could be another, number of shows they can and are willing to request, and so on.
So it surely has an impact, but it’s not the only factor. How important? I’m not sure.
About user requests/followers: It may be that someone did not bother to “follow” but they sent a request anyway.
I know, that this will be getting slightly off topic
New CEO Joanne Waage
Old CEO Tammy H. Nam
creative product features
expanding original production
partnership with “Skybound Entertainment” (The Walking Dead) - I have just looked at their frontpage and it has the same “illness” as viki.
“With a focus on innovative new models for original content and groundbreaking products and features, we’re ready to take Viki to the next level.” - Joanne Waage stated here http://worldscreen.com/new-ceo-at-viki/
I need a break to take this news, anyway maybe this developement is the reason for the latest turbulence at the license area, maybe viki was too buzy with internal stuff. Let’s wait and see what will happen, as we do not have any other chance. It is sad as it is that there is rarely any dialog between viki and volunteers.
That to me sounds like vblogger content (we have been getting more of that recently, haven’t we? and it’s cheap to produce, certainly a lot cheaper than competed for licenses) and other social media stuff and related sales opportunities.
I’m not interested in neither. I came to viki for the internationally licensed Asian dramas. Unfortunately they are the only ones I’m aware of that have those international licenses, the other service usually has geo-blocked everyone not from North America. But then viki also geo-blocked the last drama I wanted to try here.
You just need to log in into your router and renew your IP. BUT - if you do that several times a day, and this counts for switching off and on, too, your provider will block your internet access for 24 hours. We had lately a problem with our router, a kind of bug, and he tried to renew every few minutes the IP, after 2 hours our internet was blocked and we had to contact the customer service and wait for a replacement device.
I don’t know, if the same applies for other countries as well and if it did, so who would risk to be blocked for 24 hours?
I think license requests and followers of a channel do matter.
I’m upset that the other site which is America Only has an exclusive for Bride Of The Water God but decided to stay positive and keep my fingers crossed Viki is able to license the other regions as America is only a small part of the world.
Yes Viki failed to license quite a few in demand drama’s lately. Not only Kdrama but also from other countries… but if we stop filling in requests or follow a channel nothing will happen for sure. Ok that’s not true because sometimes Viki licenses stuff of which I think WHY?!
I don’t know about that so I cannot say what is true for my country. But once a technician told me “why aren’t you EVER switching off that poor router?” I thought he meant the physical machine itself would need some time off every now and then, LOL!
My only experience is that once I tried to make the IP static because of uTorrent. It’s a very complicated process, there are tutorials online to do that, with a whole lot of steps…
And I think only one request per IP is unfair too. Not only for when there are multiple drama lovers living in one house but also when a Korean convention like Kcon offers free wifi for everyone to use. Then maybe 100 people fill in the form for the drama but only one is counted because they all used the free wifi = same IP for everyone even when they are all different people.
No, seriously. How many times this happens? That there are more than two family members hooked on dramas? I don’t know about you, but I’ve been BEGGING my family members (and friends, and dance students) to watch only the first episode of a drama “and if you don’t like it, I won’t ask ever again”.
In the minimally small possibility that this happens, they can always do it from their office or their cellphone or their friend’s house.
Oh yes, by the way, most of us have a job or a friend’s house, and coffee shops with wifi, so it is very easy for each person to send at least 4-5 requests from those places.
The Kcon convention? Of all funny suggestions… Really? Can’t those people wait to get back home to send the request?
I think the one request per IP rule is fair, and rather too lenient, because it allows each person to send many requests anyway. It should be one request per logged-in user. (I know one can make multiple accounts, but it’s a hassle).
If Viki were to allow one request per user, they would be forced to REALLY take requests into account, since logged-in users are (mostly) real and undisputed. I don’t see that happening…
With one request per user, Viki must open channels several months before the on air date and promote them on the main page. With channels, which are created 2 weeks before and no promotion barely a handful requests would be sent.
Most of the study buddies of my eldest daughter, who studies asien science and korean, are hooked to asien dramas and many of them have at least a sister or her mother infected with the drama virus. I don’t know the number of students, but I estimate a few thousands in Germany. If only 10% have multiple viewers in one household and if you take account to the fast and steadily growing number of Kpop-fans, you can say, it’s not only one househould or maybe a handful, but you can speak of a few hundreds at least just in my country.
And even if you consider, that not all of them are watching on Viki, the number surpasses “a few” significantly
Really? Didn’t know that as I never checked what wufoo offers.
But I decided it’s time to promote “Bride Of The Water God” better now to gain more followers and more people to fill in the form. Hopefully it helps.
