Small Town Remedy Tops CCTV Prime Time, Passes 9,000 Heat on iQIYI

Small Town Remedy (小城良方) led data firm Maoyan Pro's (猫眼专业版) CCTV prime-time chart for October 22, its second night on air, with 2.5366% live attention for episode 3 on CCTV-8, while iQIYI's heat index for the series passed 9,000 the same day and the drama's official account announced a second television run from October 29 on Dragon TV (东方卫视) and Beijing TV (北京广播电视台).

Live attention (zhibo guanzhudu, 直播关注度) is Maoyan's real-time measure of the television audience. Where the Mask Ends (嫁金钗), also on CCTV-8 that night, was second at 1.6651%, and She and Her Girls (山花烂漫时) third at 1.2161%.

The series premiered on October 21 in CCTV-8's prime-time slot, two episodes a night, and streams on iQIYI, where VIP members got four episodes at 19:30 on October 21 and two a day at the same hour since. Xiao Zhan (肖战) plays Liu Zhengliang (刘铮亮), a gifted doctor forced back to his hometown in Northeast China; China Central Television and Linmon Pictures (柠萌影视) produce the 29-episode drama, with iQIYI as co-producer. Background is on our drama page, Small Town Remedy.

Premiere night produced the first social signal. A Weibo hot-search topic translating as "Small Town Remedy ratings hit the top" stood sixth on the list on the evening of October 21, Beijing time, at 909,092 heat, next to tags on the ratings curve, first-night data and the number of ads in the opening four episodes. The figure most often attached to it, a real-time peak just above 2 percent on the data service Kuyun (酷云), circulated through aggregator accounts; we could not confirm it from Kuyun itself.

On iQIYI, heat (redu, 热度) is the platform's own popularity index for a show. Linmon Pictures announced that the series had passed 8,000 at 12:20 Beijing time on October 22, 8,500 at 17:26 and 9,000 at 20:06; iQIYI's drama account marked the first milestone by placing the series in what it calls its "hall of fame" (jiapian diantang, 佳片殿堂).

Maoyan's daily drama chart for October 22 also had Small Town Remedy first, with a heat score of 9,787.16 against 9,738.27 for Where the Mask Ends, which streams on Youku. On Maoyan's effective-plays chart for the same day it was second, 38.754 million plays behind Where the Mask Ends at 52.12 million, and Maoyan separately reported that the series had passed 50 million effective plays across platforms. Yunhe Data (云合数据), another data firm, whose charts count effective plays of full episodes, placed it eighth on its long-form drama chart for October 21 and second on its overall buzz chart for the same day.

The second television run starts October 29 on Dragon TV and Beijing TV, daily at 19:30 in prime time, according to the official account.

Sources: Maoyan Pro (猫眼专业版), Yunhe Data (云合数据), iQIYI Drama (爱奇艺电视剧), Linmon Pictures (柠萌影视) and Small Town Remedy (小城良方) official Weibo accounts; Weibo hot search, October 21.