“I’d like to thank Jay of Portico Media” were words heard at this year’s Golden Bell Awards, where Fragrance of the First Flower garnered three major awards in the Miniseries category. Winners ZaiZai Lin (Best Actress), Lyan Cheng (Best Supporting Actress), and Angel Teng (Best Writer) all thanked Jay first in their acceptance speeches.

Without Jay Lin there would be no Fragrance of the First Flower. This Taiwanese drama about lesbian lovers has made the rounds at international film festivals. After securing a nomination in Europe’s largest drama showcase, Series Mania, competition category last year, the series took on the international scene at 12 film festivals including the Tokyo Film Festival, Frameline San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival, BFI Flare queer film festival in London, and the Melbourne Queer Film Festival in Australia. It is also representing Taiwan as a nominee at this year’s Berlin Film Festival.

It was also named alongside Squid Games from Korea as one of Variety magazine’s top international television series of 2021, making it the first Taiwanese show to make Variety’s list.

Lin founded GagaOOLala in 2016. “Gaga” stands for “gay,” while “Lala” represents “lesbian,” and “OO” comes from the French “Ou”, signifying the platform’s focus on LGBTQ content.

Six years since going on the air, GagaOOLala is now the world’s biggest queer streaming platform, attracting the most subscribers from the USA, followed by Taiwan and Thailand at second and third, respectively.

Taiwan currently boasts two on-demand streaming platforms, Catchplay+ and GagOOLala, that have gone international. Focusing on the Asian market, the former has made inroads in Indonesia and Singapore, with over seven million registered accounts. GagaOOLala is a more niche market, and although it can only claim 2.5 million members, it is available in 235 countries and regions around the globe.

According to a survey by LGBT Capital, the worldwide LGBTQ population numbers around 450 million, nearly one-tenth of the world’s population, with consumer power valued at around US$3.7 trillion annually.

Not limited to LGBTQ topics, in recent years GagaOOLala also introduced its BL (Boys’ Love) section in an effort to gain women viewers. “Love has no borders,” says Tsai Fei-chiao, chief operating officer of Result Entertainment. Dramas in the BL section generally follow the relationship theme, unlike most LGBTQ films’ emphasis on issues. This has expanded GagaOOLala’s target audience, attracting even more Fujoshi (women attracted to man-on-man love) members. In fact, last year BL helped GagaOOLala gain 790,000 registered subscribers.

"PAPA&DADDY", a Taiwanese gay marrige family show, is one of GagaOOLala's original contents (Source: Ming-Tang Huang)

Lin was born in Kaohsiung, and went to the United States at the age of nine to attend school. While a student majoring in politics and economics and minoring and German and Asian Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, he enjoyed watching Chinese-language movies like Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet and films by directors Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige as a way to stay in touch with the Chinese community.

After earning a law degree, he went to work in Silicon Valley, where as a legal counsel to a Singapore animation company he rekindled his passion for cinema, which led to his decision to start a business. With that in mind, he returned to Taiwan in 2004, partnering with director Chiu Li-Wei in an animation venture.

Securing a grant from the Ministry of Culture, as well as investing over NT$10 million of his own funds, Lin produced the animated film Kotora On the Run, set against the background of the great seafaring age of the 17th century.

However, animated films have long production periods, plus Taiwanese films largely serve the demand of the domestic market, limiting their box office potential. There are only around 100-plus cinemas around Taiwan, not all of which will show local productions. Especially with the likes of Pixar and Disney coming on so strong, having invested six years of his time with only a 10-minute showreel to show for it, Lin decided to walk away, “because I knew I’d never recoup my investment.”

“I learned something then; that is, you need distribution channels in addition to content,” relates Lin. Having stumbled in his business venture, he says, “This really taught me the lesson that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

ZaiZai Lin won the best actress in the Miniseries category at this year’s Golden Bell Awards (Source: GagaOOLala)

Pivot to international channel licensing

This led Lin to establish Portico Media, earning the trust of global media groups like Viacom, A&E, and Blue Ant, and obtaining licensing rights to channels including CNBC Asia, Al Jazeera, and Deutsche Welle. Today Lin remains Taiwan’s largest international channel license holder.

Past failures fostered a stronger threat awareness in Jay Lin. He believes that channel licensing is about input, but with the small size of Taiwan’s market, in order to stay in it for the long run it is necessary to produce output, establishing one’s own media brand.

Sanguine about the rise of social media, in 2015 he first went about establishing an online platform to produce content in-house. From the HaHa Channel, which largely featured amusing man-on-the-street interviews, he went on to found the Gaga, Lala, and GagaOOLala channels, broadcasting contents that mainstream media platforms steer away from. In the early days, quite a few of the films came from the Taiwan International Queer Film Festival, which he founded in 2014.

Running film festivals is not profitable, “but I wanted to do something meaningful,” reflects Lin. He realized that although mainstream American channels had already been  running films with gay and lesbian themes over a decade earlier, the channels that he had licensed to distribute in Taiwan would not touch the same sort of content. “The media needs a breakthrough,” he thought, so he started by holding a film festival in the hopes that the TV and film industry could find the courage to invest in and produce LGBTQ films. 

As a gay man himself on the verge of turning 40, in order to head up the Queer Film Festival, he officially came out to his parents.

Lin expects more engagements from the film industry to invest and produce movies to speak out for LGBTQ community (Source: GagaOOLala)

His father, who had worked in the education field, supported him with his actions, rallying his peers (none of whom were queer) to attend the film festival. Afterwards, one after another, people left comments online saying, “thanks to the Queer Film Festival I decided to come out to my parents.” LGBTQ content creation in Taiwan also took off, like a “butterfly effect” of the film festival.

Starting two years ago, GagaOOLala began holding international pitches as a platform, encouraging creators to make pitches and handing out bonus incentive funds. This approach helped creators reduce risks and ensure that there would be a platform to share their works, so that others would not have to experience hardship like Lin had met with animated films a few years earlier.

Angel Teng won the pitch festival’s prize and bonus money for her script for Fragrance of the First Flower, earning NT$3 million to offset production costs. GagaOOLala helped source additional funding from China Network Systems for a total of nearly NT$7 million in production funds, enough to make six 20-minute episodes.

Fragrance of the First Flower, available on the GagaOOLala platform, has found popularity with European and American Internet users. Recently the intellectual property was sold to South Korea, and it is expected to be adapted into a full-length feature film to be shown at cinemas around Korea.

Shunning the Netflix model, forming OTT alliances

Lin has followed a particular strategy to take original MiIT content to the international stage. Instead of competing directly with major global platforms, he believes that “if you offer good service you can succeed as well in niche markets.” Accordingly, he changed course to form alliances with small OTT (over-the-top media) platforms all around Asia. On the one hand, this allows him to gain local operations experience along with collecting data from partner platforms, allowing him to analyze data and learn about audience preferences and viewing habits to base marketing and advertising outlay on.

He also helped alliance partners with sales, such as selling copyrights to Thailand content to Spain. To date he has helped sell copyright licensing to over 30 platforms around the world.

From initiating products, to production, platforms, promotion, and commissioned sales, GagaOOLala has sweeping control over production and sales.

“The way we have earned the highest honors in Taiwanese television with a queer streaming platform and miniseries production is just incredible. The TV and cinema industry has really changed,” marvels Lin.

Lin targeted the LGBTQ niche market to produce delicate series show (Source: GagaOOLala)

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Have you read?

• Taiwan Becomes the First Asian Country to Legalize Same-Sex Marriage 
• The First Step toward Solving Bigger Ills of Homophobia 

Translated by David Toman
Edited by TC Lin
Uploaded by Ian Huang