| Wu Changchang, Associate Professor, School of Communication, East China Normal University
Produced by | Tencent News Lichun Studio
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The development of Chinese variety shows in 2021 has undergone the strictest regulation and control in the post-epidemic era. Purely from the data point of view, 2021 China's variety shows the following characteristics: 1. The overall output has declined compared with the previous year, especially the network variety show; 2. The social influence of the network variety show still maintains a more obvious advantage than that of the TV variety show; 3. In the top ten variety shows, more than half of the programs related to the group draft competition variety show are excluded from the word of mouth; 4. On the contrary, the trainee group selection competition variety show is excluded from the top ten of word-of-mouth, and different types of reality shows occupy the dominant position. In fact, reality TV is still the largest genre variety show produced this year, although its total volume has hit a new low (113 files) in the past three years; 5. Video websites are still the most important production subjects, of which Tencent Video has the highest total production volume.
From the "2021 Tencent Entertainment White Paper"
Variety shows, like TV dramas, are absolutely just needed in the category of mass consumption, especially in the case of repeated epidemics, weakened individual mobility, and long-term physical space isolation, its demand is even more critical. Under the premise of combing based on the above data, this article summarizes the development of variety shows in 2021 and will focus on 4 keywords.
01 Keyword 1: Abrupt stop
In May 2021, iQIYI's "Youth with You" was ordered by the Beijing Municipal Radio and Television Bureau to stop broadcasting because the video of fans casting "pouring milk" was widely disseminated on the Internet. This should be the second variety show in the history of China's audiovisual development to be cut off halfway (the first one dates back to "The First Heartbeat" produced by Chongqing Satellite TV in 2007). This incident not only led to the direct involvement of the relevant state departments in the process of governance of the economy and culture of the rice circle, but also made the two major video websites in the head competition in this type of program market stop the production of trainee groups to compete in variety shows.
Since "Creation 101" and "Idol Trainees" opened the precedent of trainee group drafts and variety shows in 2018, the Chinese male/female trainee market has been selected for the same type of program for three consecutive years. Due to the lack of sufficient time for cultivation, this market has long been out of touch. The production method of small hand workshops of brokerage companies has once again exacerbated the seriousness of this phenomenon: First, the production capacity of trainees is seriously insufficient. Secondly, for four consecutive years, the direct confrontation of iQiyi, Tencent Video, Youku and other programs of the same type not only diluted the attention of the audience, but also consumed the potential of the market transmission and expansion of this type of program at a faster rate than the market replacement - in other words, the audience and leeks are not enough. Third, the training model of idol brokerage companies is essentially an unconventional (nine-year compulsory education) education, which leads to the limited level of cultural education of most trainees, thus laying hidden dangers for the "immoral" or "out-of-norm" behavior of some idols. But even so, program producers, broadcast platforms, advertisers, and rice circles have formed a community of interests that intersect and collude with each other. The governance of the country is focused on this.
Nowadays, it has become a fact that the trainee group draft competition variety show has come to an abrupt end. For example, film and television companies, star studios or MCN institutions have begun to intentionally cultivate their own trainees, how are these individuals digested by the market when the rice circle economy and variety shows are strictly controlled? It is also worth looking forward to whether variety show producers will change their ways, or how they will be desensitized in an alternative form, so as to make them qualified and consumable star products in the entertainment market.
02 Keyword 2: nostalgia and healing
As mentioned earlier, since May 2021, the relevant departments have launched a series of interlocking actions to govern online culture and internal entertainment circles, which have affected the production, consumption and circulation of online and television variety shows. These effects can be understood as a continuation or escalation of the "entertainment restriction order" effect issued by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television ten years ago. Faced with this situation, many platforms or TV stations choose emotional programs and try to change the runway. Among them, the performance of the "Hunan system" is more prominent. They have gone farther and farther in the female theme, and reality SHOWs with wives, daughters, and mothers as the main body have been launched one after another, almost covering all the stages of a woman's life.
However, of all the shows, the most eye-catching is Mango TV's "Goodbye Lover". The divorce variety show, which borrows from the "Let's Divorce" broadcast by south Korean private television network TV CHOSUN at the end of 2020, invites three divorced or ready divorced couples with different personalities and social representatives to participate in a 16-day journey. It adopts the filming method of a journey-style documentary, changing the style of Mango TV's production of emotional reality shows, not dramatically amplifying the contradictions between husband and wife, but with the help of various behavioral psychology techniques, so that couples with broken feelings continue to have emotional interlacing, overlapping, tension or conflict. In 2021, which was jokingly called the first year of celebrity divorce by netizens and The divorce rate in China was rising for 16 consecutive years, "Goodbye Lover" naturally produced a mirror psychological effect. That is to say, most viewers see not them from the celebrity couples participating in the reality show, but the similar or corresponding emotional crux, trauma and experience they have encountered. Such reflexivity will inevitably produce an emotional healing effect, so it is not surprising that this show firmly occupies the first place in the 2021 variety show word-of-mouth list.
According to the "2021 Tencent Entertainment White Paper", the word-of-mouth index of "Goodbye Lover" was 83.88, winning the first place in the 2021 domestic variety show word-of-mouth list
Another variety show "Time Concert" broadcast by Hunan Satellite TV in the second half of the year and "Our Song" broadcast by Oriental Satellite TV strengthened the healing nature of popular music. In particular, "Time Concert" is basically a re-revitalization of the musical resources accumulated by Hunan Satellite TV in the past decade or so. Unfortunately, such a program could have led to the healing nature of music by the vivid stories of the musicians themselves, but it turned out to be the "same song" that stirred up and summoned the nostalgia of specific age groups (middle-aged) and class people (middle class).
It is foreseeable that healing will be one of the main trends in the development of variety shows in the next few years. The increasing number of "atomized" or "lonely" individuals, the accumulation of physical or emotional trauma experienced by individuals, these objectively existing social collective psychology, inevitably produce emotional appeals for the purpose of escaping, healing or blunting suffering. One of the most important ways to meet these demands is through variety shows. Healing variety shows with journey-style documentaries as the core model may be transformed into the emotional path dependence of these people. In December, the reality show "Glad to Meet You" is the product of targeting the social and emotional symptoms of urban youth and middle class, continuing and upgrading the healing effect of "Strange Life" three years ago.
Zhou Xun and Aya, the initiators of "Glad to Know You", invite a celebrity friend per episode to face the seven major life themes of socialization, residence, intergeneration, intimate relationship, decompression, occupation, life and death
03 Keyword 3: Workplace reality show
The term "inner volume" has become popular since 2020, which subtly expresses and demonstrates the increasing competition that young people face in school and work. "Lying flat" has thus become the collective psychology of many young people. This mixture of cynicism, indifference and escapism was already evident in Creation 101 – evidenced by the popularity of Yang Chaoyue and her highly bound "koi" discourse.
The variety show once again responded to these questions and emotions. Since its launch in 2014, "Strange Story" has actively played a social role in helping young people answer questions. Subsequently, Tencent Video purchased the rights to "The Birth of a New Employee: A Good Man" broadcast on South Korea's Channel A channel, and broadcast the Chinese version of "Heartwarming Offer" in the summer of 2019. In particular, the doctor season in 2021 unexpectedly hits the pain point of the doctor's profession, and for the first time, with the help of the particularity of the hospital scene - rather than the "universal" confusion that young people face in the law firm and has nothing to do with the essential attributes of the profession in the first two seasons - and the "synchronization" of reality TV to produce a more "real" "image" of life, losing no time in helping young people who have just entered the workplace to consult the pulse.
The third season of "Heartwarming Offer" focuses on the doctor industry, documenting the experiences of several medical students practicing in top 3 hospitals
04 Keyword 4: Cultural Chineseness
The "Chinese Festival" series of short films produced by Henan Satellite TV in 2021 year-to-date is out of the circle. "Tang Palace Night Banquet" topped the Weibo topic hot search list in a short period of time, once again creating a "peak" of influence of provincial satellite TV cultural innovation programs. To know the last "peak", it has to be traced back to CCTV's "Readers" in 2016.
At the 2021 Henan Satellite TV Spring Festival Gala, the dance "Tang Palace Night Banquet" used VR technology to use cultural objects such as Tang Sancai, Jia Hu Bone Flute, and "Lady of the Hairpin Flower" as the background of the program, which became a hit
How do you view the cultural and political significance of Henan Satellite TV's "Chinese Festivals" series? First of all, it is through the innovation of the virtual visual industry that they have iterated the public image of the cultural innovation program "Telling The Chinese Story Well" - previously, "Cultural Chineseness" mainly relied on programs such as the "Chinese Poetry Conference" that focused on speech and games for output; today, its visual effects build a more extreme visual space through holograms and digital images. Secondly, from the Spring Festival, Lantern Festival, Dragon Boat Festival to Mid-Autumn Festival, after the "Chinese Festival" is serialized and symbolized, it automatically produces an energy that enhances the Chinese people's belief, trust and confidence in cultural Chineseness.
More importantly, this series of short films has realized the construction of a cross-platform image of "cultural Chineseness". From television stations and online platforms to social media, it has successfully achieved and sustained the attention of young audiences to the Chinese festival series for the first time. So it's more like an uninterrupted intergenerational transmission. The cultural and political significance of this series of short films lies in this: how to visually innovate the "cultural Chineseness" of cultural innovation programs, so as to activate the audience's awareness of "cultural Chineseness" to the greatest extent, especially the awareness of "cultural Chineseness" by young people, and enhance the sense of identity of "nation-state".
Overall, the most regrettable thing about the development of Chinese variety shows in 2021 is that there has been no "blockbuster" that has aroused positive social attention - although some people may mention Mango TV's "Brother with Thorns", however, in theory, it is more like a themed, stock-free reality show. Because it cannot constitute the underlying logic of the cultivation system variety show, after all, cultivation is conditional. The brothers who participated in the show, most of whom were successful people in their careers and families, did not have much room for growth, let alone stimulated the audience's desire to "reproduce the mother's job". The show mainly presents intergenerational coexistence, cross-border tension, daily details and chemical reactions between male stars, which is a way of expressing women to reality shows, which is more in line with the overall texture and appearance of Mango TV reality shows. Like "sister", it forcibly links the small stage-based narrative with the grand narrative of society, which can easily produce a sense of separation. The size of variety shows is politically correct and should be mutually inclusive, not mutually exclusive. The problem with the first season of "Chase the Light, Brother" is also here.
Overall, comedy, healing and workplace reality shows may be the trend of the development of Chinese variety shows in the future, and they are also three types of programs that may produce blockbusters.
(Source: Tencent News)
* Some images are from the internet