Free Web NovelChapter 212: Chapter 190: Should You Trust the Media’s Ratings?
The headquarters of the Drama Guild.
Inside the largest conference room, a large group of people wore gloomy expressions.
All the important figures of the Guild—the Chairman, the Vice-Chairman, and all the directors—were present.
If a Curse Mage were to cast the Cloud Burning Technique in this conference room right now, the Feilin theater industry could probably leap twenty years ahead.
These illustrious figures of the theater world had gathered today to discuss how to deal with the New Drama Guild, which was currently in the limelight.
They had held a similar discussion when the Shadow of Evil appeared, and their conclusion back then was that they were outmatched.
They were lucky they hadn’t been completely crushed by the Shadow of Evil.
Of course, they had framed their inability to compete as "seeking a differentiated competitive track."
But that excuse didn’t quite work for the New Drama Guild.
Everyone was in the theater business. There was no differentiation; they were on the exact same track.
When *Prosecution Witness* burst onto the scene a few weeks ago, most of them hadn’t paid it much mind, planning to handle this new production with their old methods.
Flood the market with similar productions from their major troupes, suppress it with a media blitz, arrange for fake audience members to cause disturbances, and then, once the play could no longer be staged, acquire it for a low price.
However, their old playbook was clearly no match for this new opponent.
Every one of the similar productions staged by the Guild’s troupes lost money, which only served to make *Prosecution Witness* look like a must-see.
Now, theatergoers across the Royal City had only one hot topic of discussion. Tickets for the Sutton King’s Theatre were being scalped for several times their original price.
The actors of the New Drama Guild had added so many extra shows they didn’t want to perform anymore, lazily passing up the box office earnings from yet another sold-out performance.
Audiences in the city would rather pay exorbitant prices for scalped tickets than watch the Drama Guild’s steeply discounted shows.
The media offensive was also proving ineffective. They had submitted a deluge of negative reviews to the newspapers.
They had gone to great lengths to find flaws.
All the critics collaborating with the Guild had held a joint symposium—sinking a fair bit of money into tickets—just to summarize a few seemingly well-founded shortcomings.
"A cheap, illogical courtroom farce. Only the twist in the final few minutes could barely be called interesting, but that brief moment of enjoyment hardly justifies the exorbitant ticket price, nor does it compensate for the torment of the preceding acts."
"Aside from the acting, which is passably exquisite, the mystery plot is practically nonexistent. The pacing drags, and the final twist is abrupt and clumsy. It’s not unexpected, just forced and contrived."
"The crude jokes are worthy of a street performer and have no place in the highest halls of theater. The awkward comedic style isn’t the least bit funny, treating the stage like a child’s playground."
"The characters are as flat as artless machines, a feeling intensified by the inexperienced acting. The final twist exists purely for the sake of having a twist—something slapped on at the last minute—making the supposedly cunning criminal couple look like idiots."
"The courtroom scenes are commendable, full of tension and humor, but the ending ruins everything, rendering all the earlier foreshadowing meaningless!"
Reviews like these appeared in all the major newspapers.
It had to be said, these critics had some skill; they could see that the final twist was the part most likely to stir up controversy.
In Agatha’s original work, the story ended when the client’s wife revealed the truth. The subsequent plot points—the client’s affair and his eventual murder—were not included.
Those were all additions by the movie’s screenwriter and had drawn the ire of some fans of the original work, who considered it a forced happy ending that made the characters less intelligent.
That viewpoint was, to an extent, understandable.
Even though Agatha herself loved the adaptation, she was just an author who wrote novels. What does she know about the original work!
Unfortunately, there were no fans of the original work here. Otherwise, they would have definitely come to the Drama Guild’s aid.
Anyone who read these negative reviews carefully would find it easy to spot that they contradicted one another.
But this was precisely the effect the Drama Guild wanted.
People wouldn’t realize the negative reviews were organized and premeditated. More importantly, it would mislead them into thinking the play was flawed in every aspect.
Muddy the waters!
After that, the controversy surrounding the production would churn endlessly, like ancient sludge stirred up from the bottom of a pond.
However, the idea was much better than the reality.
The actual results deviated slightly from their expectations.
After spending a fortune to get their reviews onto the main pages of major newspapers, they had barely made a splash in the court of public opinion.
Hardly anyone cared about articles published in traditional print media.
In the short span of just over a year since the advent of Demon Vision and social circles, newspapers had rapidly lost their status as a mainstream media channel.
This was especially true after the birth of the "phone," a device specifically for browsing social circles.
Before that, the influence of print media could be described as "declining." Once the phone came out, it became a "nosedive."
Those who could afford a phone were practically glued to it. Whenever news broke, the feedback in social circles was far faster than any article in a newspaper.
As for those who couldn’t afford a phone, they didn’t read newspapers much either.
As Chairman, Sir Turt had long considered leading the critics in a charge onto the internet.
But because the internet was developed by the Zog Group—an organization the Guild was reluctant to even mention—the plan to expand onto the internet was shot down by a vote from the board of directors.
’Why would we have our critics create content for the internet? Wouldn’t that just be helping the enemy?’
This was the so-called "inertia" of a large organization.
It was difficult to push through anything new.
The fake audience members sent to cause trouble had it even worse; they mostly came back in tears, asking for refunds.
Worse still, many of them were co-opted by the other side and turned around to cause trouble at the theaters owned by the Drama Guild.
