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Top1. Introduction
Since the success of the popular drama series “Meteor Garden” in 2001, all television stations have started to produce or broadcast trendy drama series. For production companies, making contemporary drama series is both a trend and a business opportunity. However, since the introduction of Korean drama series, the number of Taiwanese drama series released has been gradually decreasing. Certain television stations, predominately play Korean drama series. Therefore, television stations buy foreign-produced series instead of producing their own dramas. The government has become aware of this issue. In August, 2011, the National Communications Commission (NCC) officially requested that the stations including Eastern Television, Videoland, and GTV which violated the operation plan by having a high percentage of Korean drama series among the programs they broadcast, reduce the percentage of foreign drama series to below 80% before April, 2012 (Chang, 2011). This shows that the government has been supportive of Taiwanese drama. Furthermore, is comparison with other types of Taiwanese drama, the ratings of trendy drama series are higher. It can be seen that these series have played an important role in the Taiwanese drama market. However, as indicated by the ratings of current trendy drama series, it is clear that not every series is successful. Therefore, for trendy drama series significant production companies, producing trendy drama series with high ratings is a challenge.
One way to determine whether a trendy drama series production company can make a profit is to check the ratings of their series. A good series which can attract an audience is based on a good script. According to TVBS News (2012), producer Zhi-Ping Chai has said that “it is impossible to support a series without a good script and a good director.” Besides a good script, a good scriptwriter is also essential as the person who infuses soul into a script. Hobson (2003) believes that scriptwriters are at the core of drama series. There are no scripts without scriptwriters. Scriptwriters give life to scripts. They create characters in drama and make plots come alive. One of the key factors behind the success of a trendy drama series is the script written by its scriptwriter. Thus, scripts and scriptwriters are two key factors for the success of trendy drama series production companies.
Selecting a script for a trendy Taiwanese drama series is a multi-criteria decision- making issue. In the production team of a drama series, there is usually a decision-making group composed of top managers to decide which script to use. Decisions made this way are usually subjective. In other words, selection results are usually controlled by those holding power, and sometimes it is not easy to take an objective view. This study aims to develop a script selection model for trendy Taiwanese drama series from the perspective of production companies, in hopes of providing these companies with a more objective and efficient way of finding the best scripts to further produce high-quality and to highly rated series and to improve the companies images .Previous research regarding trendy drama series has mainly considered the success of trendy Taiwanese drama series by the audience and marketing applications. There exists very little literature focusing on scripts for trendy drama series, and even less literature concerned with developing an objective and quantitative decision model for selecting proper scripts. Thus, this study adopts the Modified Delphi Method and the AHP Method to build an objective and quantitative script selection model for trendy Taiwanese drama series.
Based on the above-mentioned research motivation, this study adopts a research design which is both qualitative and quantitative. First, literature related to selection criteria was collected. High-level managers and producers from idol drama series, production teams were invited for expert interviews, so that this study could be practical and so that a quantitative decision model could be built. This study tried to develop a script selection model for trendy Taiwanese drama series, in order to explore the differences among various candidate programs with different conditions, so that the best model could be decided upon. Therefore, this study aspires to help production companies to reduce risks when choosing scripts. These companies could then benefit from high ratings.