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clairedaring · 1 month

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Hello Claire! It always takes me by surprise and leaves me with awe when I read your posts about thai production houses. And it's a topic that really interests me.

So, disclaimer before I mention my question - sorry if this is stupid or weird, but why did Nadao close its operation? I mean, given the fact that they had such powerhouses under them (not just actors but directors, producers, musicians, etc.) and if I remember correctly, it was right after IPYTM (or maybe after a year or so), so it felt like they were on the pathway of constant success.

~ @tipsyjaehyun

Hi Rain!

I always love talking about Nadao so thank YOU for allowing me the opportunity to talk about them. And please, there are never stupid or weird questions ever, especially when it comes to Nadao Bangkok (rip love).

When Nadao announced they were closing down, they posted this very long letter explaining why as well. Here's a summary of the contents:

In short: Nadao will terminate their roles as artist development, series & music producer. The reason is that their artists are now grownup enough to choose their own paths. Also the seniors have different goals. It is not sudden. They have been discussing it for a while. We have seen many Nadao artists moving out and continue with their own journey. This is the reason. Nadao will terminate their roles and want to give their artists more freedom to work in the industry. Ongoing series production will be passed to the director and they will make their own decision. Ongoing music production will be under the artists’ own names. Nadao will also introduce their artists to network in the path that their artists are interested in.

Nadao closing its business leaves a lot of regret in the hearts of fans who follow Nadao artists (me, i am the fan in question). Out of all the speculations, I think there's this one Reddit comment from u/Virtual_Tadpole9821 that aligns most with my speculation.

I wasn't originally going to comment because I was hoping to see some analysis emerge online, but since I'm not seeing any here's my two cents anyway. Knowing Nadao, the move is unlikely to be directly motivated by financial reasons. The company has consistently been profitable. Its financials for the 2021 fiscal year haven't been filed yet, but even in 2020, when the pandemic first hit, it still made a net profit of 29 million baht after taxes. Though this was down from 40 million in 2019, it's still more than 21 million in 2018. Things might have been worse in 2021, but it's unlikely to be too bad for them to weather. They don't appear to have that many fixed costs. As most of their income comes from artist management and the main costs are the artists' cuts, less work just means the pie is smaller, but the company still gets a piece and won't bleed to death. Not producing means not having to pay for crew and equipment, and their productions are usually externally funded anyway. If the company was facing financial difficulties, the first thing to do would be to scale back on non-performing operations, and the loss-making Nadao Music would be the first to go. But that's not what they're doing. Rather, they're shutting down all current operations at once. The move is probably more due to ideological re-questioning of the company's mission. As /u/dangrankeyi pointed out, Nadao tries to position itself as first and foremost a talent management agency. But it hasn't really been able to grow itself much in that regard. As their artists keep outgrowing their target group, they need to keep replacing them. But the scene is much more crowded now than in 2009 when the company was founded or in 2013 when it made Hormones. The company doesn't appear to have been successfully developing much new talent. Its latest pivoting attempt was when it launched Nadao Academy in early 2020, but that seems to have ceased with the pandemic. And even if the project was successful, what work would the company find for the trainees? It's not like it's doing that well with its current artists anyway. Nadao has some 30 actors under its umbrella, but apart from BKPP, things have been rather quiet for them. The problem I see is that there's a disjoint between what the company wants to do and what it actually does best. It wants to grow talent, but it's having problems finding work for that talent, and doesn't quite have the capacity to generate that work itself. On the other hand, Nadao has become best known for is productions, which for the most part have been passion projects driven more by their creator's visions than by business strategy. But such projects don't serve those original goals well enough. The only way they could have sustained this was probably to keep dishing out seasons of Hormones, but they didn't, because they knew they wouldn't be able to maintain quality, and even if they did, it would have lost steam by now anyway. The thing is, Nadao doesn't actually need to exist for its creators to do the production stuff they want, and are good at. That can be accommodated under parent company GDH and its other subsidiaries, which is where Nadao's production crews come from anyway. Looking at it this way, it isn't very difficult to see why they'd come to the decision not to continue doing the things they're doing as Nadao Bangkok.

And I would say that after two years since Nadao closes down, it's been pretty clear that the closing down of Nadao was more ideology-motivated than business. While Nadao officially shut down it's business, the actual company itself was renamed Tada Entertainment to accompany P'Yong Songyos Sugmakanan's pursuit of making the next perfect idol groups. Tada Entertainment now manages girl group MXFRUIT (under subsidiary label Ily Lab)...

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And BUS (a Thai pop group formed through 789 Survival, under subsidiary Sonray Music). Khunpol (Bas from ITSAY) also competed in 789 Survival and debuted in BUS.

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And DICE (consisting of the members who participated in 789 Survival but didn't make it into BUS, also managed by Sonray Music)

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One must be quite confounded by P'Yong Soyos' new pursuits but watching the documentary of how 9x9 (Nine By Nine) was formed, I think it becomes very clear that P'Yong has always harboured an interest in making the next big Thai pop group, similar to Kpop idol group style. I highly recommend watching this if you have time, or at least the first two episodes of the documentary. It's honestly one of the realest documentaries I've ever watched of an idol group, the way they talk about each other here is basically how they talk about each other in real life, even now.

It was just unfortunate that 9x9 had to be a temporary thing 🥲 (understandable though, they had 4 full time lakorn actors Tor, James, Captain, Ryu, 2 singer/actor Ice and JJ and 3 music-focused artists Third, Jackie, Porsche). So their reunion on the last episode of 789 Survival was a hugeeeeeee thing.

So yeah.... before I ramble on and forget what your original question is, I would say P'Yong's general pursuit and ambitions in the music/Thai pop industry coupled with Nadao's roster of artists outgrowing its target group are the biggest reasons for Nadao closing in general.

I'm always grateful to Nadao for bringing us some of the best series in existence (crazy to think how In Family We Trust is conceived as a part of 9x9 project, with the main purpose to make a series to star all nine boys of 9x9) yet it swept the Nataraja awards (Thai Emmys) that year. This is yet another stellar example of how Nadao ended up excelling at what they don't plan to do (producing series) than what they do intend (managing artists/boy groups). 9x9 was a successful project though, don't get me wrong, I'm just trying to make the case that IFWT is more successful than P'Yong probably intended it to be (though P'Yong was pretty ambitious with this project himself, getting all the experienced older lakorn actors into this so perhaps he did plan for it to be that successful).

Even though, there were many Nadao artists that left before they closed down like James, Peach, Nonkul... I really like that most Nadao artists remained very close with their fellow Nadao peers, and often times ending up in same projects together once again. This year, a few notable reunions off the top of my head is Nonkul and Ud Awat in a horror zombie film Operation Undead (currently out in cinemas), Tor and JJ in thriller series Spare Me Your Mercy (currently filming), Nonkul and Captain in the Mouse TH remake (just wrapped filming).

I'm always sad about Nadao closing down but seeing how most former Nadao artists have no trouble finding works on their own after its closing, I'm very happy to see them flourishing and doing their own thing. I love that there's a huge family energy when it comes to Nadao because the senior artists always consider their junior like their little brothers and sisters (Ice Paris being the MC for both DICE and BUS showcases, Tor and Ice being the MCs for the 789 Survival). P'Yong has previously talked about how "Nadao isn't just a company, it's like a home. That's why when some of their artist left Nadao, P'Yong considered it more as them "graduating" so they can grow and build path on their own."

Below is a clip of Tor talking about how grateful he is to P'Yong (if you watch 9x9 documentary and some other interviews Tor did, you'll see that P'Yong can be quite harsh to him and put much pressure on Tor (and other Nadao artists as well) but they all seem to look up to him like a parental figure)

Not to mention, if you are a fan of Hormones, the girls always have their annual reunions and it always warms my heart to see how close they still are with each other.

Sighs... I almost completely forgot the question again. But yea Nadao definitely could have stayed and given us more magnum opus because I personally haven't had enough at all but it's great to see P'Yong happy with his successful groups and the former Nadao artists going on their own individual paths while maintaining good relations with P'Yong and Nadao/GDH creative crew (directors, producers, writers...)