Everyone is about to talk to you about vertical drama. Here is what to know first.
A format born in China, which reached Europe with its business model already attached, and on which almost nothing has been written for a professional readership. This free booklet explains the mechanism, the costs, the rules that just changed, and what Europe actually produces. Fourteen chapters, two appendices, more than one hundred dated references — two hours thirty of reading, or twenty minutes if you read only the opening and the chapter that concerns you.
Ludovic Bostral · Streaming Radar · September 2026 editionStart reading
The booklet is free and does not download: you read it here, chapter by chapter. Your work address opens the whole thing, on this device and the next.
A work address is required: the booklet is written for professionals in the sector, and a personal address does not say where you work. One welcome message, no automated follow-up, one-click unsubscribe.
billion dollars: China's share of the global revenue Omdia forecasts for 2026, deduced (14 minus 3 outside China), on a free model funded by advertising
to shoot an American sixty-episode series, with twenty-five people excluding cast
French app in the ranking of the hundred most downloaded free apps in France
What you will know when you close it
- Why Quibi burned through $1.75 billion in six months with exactly the same format, and what it was missing.
- Where the money actually goes: of every dollar spent to recruit a viewer, fifteen to twenty-five cents reach the app.
- What China's Order No. 16 of July 31, 2026 just changed, effective September 1 — and why a series generated by artificial intelligence falls into the most tightly supervised category at a budget four times lower.
- What France has produced since 2025: twelve series, seven of them from public broadcasters, none sold by the episode, and a public fund for social platforms whose first commission had not yet met as of April 3, 2026.
- The five misconceptions that come up in every conversation, corrected one by one, with the numbers.
Contents
- —What You Need to Know3 min
- 01What It Is7 min
- 02Where It Came From5 min
- 03How It Gets Made11 min
- 04Where the Stories Come From8 min
- 05How the Money Works10 min
- 06Genres, and What Funds Them8 min
- 07China Changes the Rules9 min
- 08The World Map16 min
- 09Europe and France Get Started17 min
- 10What It Is Not8 min
- 11The Four Breaking Points8 min
- 12The Audience Changes, the Catalogue Follows7 min
- 13Paris Is a Set. Who Produces in France?7 min
- 14Any Community Can Make One4 min
- AA Vertical Drama Glossary8 min
- BMethod and Sources12 min
Who it is for
Anyone who has to talk about it this week without time to work through it all: a journalist before deadline, a producer being approached, an executive between meetings, a commission member who has to decide. Definitions come before numbers, and every chapter opens on three to five sentences you can quote as they stand.
What it is not
It is not a production manual: the full report keeps the why and the how. It is not a verdict on France — French activity is one section out of twelve, described and dated. And it is not a forecast: the booklet says where things stand, not who is getting it wrong.
Every number carries its source and its date
More than one hundred dated references, classified in appendix B, which also gives the survey protocol, the conversion rate used, and — this is rarer — what the sources do not allow you to establish, absence by absence. A number looks wrong to you? Write in: it will be checked, corrected if need be, and the correction credited to you.
Ready to read?
Fourteen chapters, two appendices, more than one hundred dated references. Free, online.