"If you are happy, you must look at the happy family, and if you are not happy, you must look at the happy family." And how good was the former fast book?
After three or four episodes of the "Happy Base Camp" column was launched, it quickly occupied the weekend prime time of the national television market, and won the Starlight Award and the 16th China Television Golden Eagle Award in 1998. The phenomenon of "Happy Base Camp" was called "Happy Whirlwind" by experts and media at that time, and soon nearly a hundred similar columns appeared on television stations across the country, triggering a "variety show change" in the national television industry.
Domestic TV programs mainly broadcast news, Hunan Satellite TV insists on entertainment stations, and "Happy Base Camp" captures two key words - entertainment and stimulation. When Kuaiben was 15 years old, former producer Long Mei once said that the annual production cost of the show was only 10 million, and the advertising revenue exceeded 800 million! There is no doubt that Kuaiben is a huge gold-sucking top stream, and the purchase price of the naming rights of the column once exceeded the advertising price level of CCTV in the same period.
In 1997, Hunan Television was officially broadcast on the star, and Hunan Jingshi's self-made variety show "Lucky 3721" achieved an amazing rating of up to 66%, in order to match "Lucky 3721", a brother Hunan Television Fully prepared "Happy Base Camp".
On July 11 of the same year, the "Happy Base Camp" was officially launched. In 1998, he jiong was invited to join and partner with Li Xiang, so that "Happy Base Camp" had core competitiveness. Impression viewers must remember that in order to attract everyone to watch "Happy Base Camp", this program was stimulated by heavy prizes, and each program sent out color TVs, refrigerators and other large items.
The program no longer presents the performance content of the star alone, but more allows the star to interact with the host or the audience on the stage, the performance form is more lively, the interaction between the audience and the program is increased, and the program form is more abundant.
The explosion of "Happy Base Camp" was because it was really "daring" that year, and even dared to be almost incompatible with all the variety shows at that time.
International star David Beckham, the first time in the world to appear on a variety show, is in the fast book; Taiwanese artists into the mainland development, the first stop is the "Happy Base Camp", such as Jay Chou, Zhong Hanliang; many actors who never participate in variety shows, such as Liang Chaowei, Jacky Cheung will also give fast face.
"Happy Base Camp" has slowly become a domestic phenomenon-level variety show, unmatched at its peak, and even broke two world records. And behind such a successful fast book, we have to mention a man - He Jiong.
All along, He Jiong has almost become synonymous with "high emotional intelligence", doing things without leaks, and the hosting style can also make everyone feel like a spring breeze. From the perspective of the development process of Kuaiben, before hosting "Happy Base Camp", He Jiong was actually a foreign language teacher in a university, and perhaps it was the profession of a teacher, and He Jiong's later hosting career laid a good cultural foundation, so that He Jiong could calmly cope with the occurrence of various things on the later hosting stage.
Since the release of "Happy Base Camp" in 1998, He Jiong has been the initial host. You know, at that time, He Jiong was still a young man in his twenties, and the "Happy Base Camp" at that time was actually not as hot as it is now. At that time, the members of the Happy Family had not all arrived, until the later addition of Xie Na, Li Weijia, Du Haitao and Wu Xin, He Jiong had never left the "Happy Base Camp".
Along the way, whether the program is hot or not, no matter how strong the pressure of public opinion is, He Jiong has always insisted, and this insistence is 20 years. From the beginning of a young guy to the current forty years, He Jiong has accompanied "Happy Base Camp" for twenty years, countless nights to meet us on time, bringing us countless relaxed and happy times.
If the person who should be respected in "Happy Base Camp" is who is, then this person should be He Jiong He Teacher, He Jiong is popular, has wide connections, good popularity, and has most of the friends in the entertainment industry, and still dominates the status of a brother of satellite TV. Therefore, even if the program side replaces Li Weijia, Wu Xin, Du Haitao, and even Xie Na, who has gone twice, she will not give up He Jiong.
The success of a program, as long as He Jiong is the host, has already been half successful.
On the first day of the year of 2022, with the launch of a variety show called "Hello Saturday", many people found that "Happy Base Camp" would be permanently suspended. As the ace variety show of Hunan Mango Station, it has been broadcast for 24 years, and now it has stopped broadcasting without warning, and the host lineup has changed from six to five, only He Jiong has stayed as the host, plus Four resident guests of Cai Shaofen, Qin Xiaoxian, Wang Hedi and Brigitte.
But why is it always difficult to escape the "curse" of the king variety show?
Every industry and show has its own destiny. How long will a variety show live? "Happy Base Camp" lived for 24 years, and "Kangxi Lai" lived for 12 years.
The two shows are also based on entertaining the public, very similar, "Happy Base Camp" "happy" to the 7th year, repeated production mode, repeated hosting style, almost every week is repeated in the style of the program, in the words of He Jiong, "every Saturday will meet, maybe even the husband and wife are not so punctual!"
It may be from this time that the program began to change its flavor, the quality of the program shrank sharply, there was no creativity, the times passed, and the program itself was increasingly depleted of its innovative ability.
We can realize from the suspended "Kangxi Lai" that the veteran variety show faces "theme duplication" and "tiredness" is an important factor in choosing to stop broadcasting. The biggest problem encountered in "Happy Base Camp" is also "aesthetic fatigue".
Veteran variety shows are not good, in addition to "internal worries", there are also "external troubles". The domestic comprehensive market has continued to exert force and divided the traffic of veteran variety shows. The once-established variety show is no longer the only choice for the audience to get "happiness". The "departure" of the veteran variety show is an inevitability.
The ratings of "Happy Base Camp", which has won the championship of variety shows for consecutive years, continue to decline. In 2020, the average period viewership was 0.82%, ranking 18th. The traffic is no longer, in just three years, the advertising investment of "Happy Base Camp" has shrunk by nearly 1 billion. By 2018, its investment volume was only 221 million. "Happy Base Camp" actively saves itself, increasing the guest lineup and increasing the proportion of the game. But this time, self-help failed. Behind the decline of god-level variety shows, there are three major controversies.
First, the format of the program is old-fashioned
Each variety show has its own lifespan, the problem facing the happy base camp now, for more than 10 years, the audience opens the TV forever to see only the old faces of five people, the content is always a funny interaction between the host and the star, all relying on subtitles to increase the atmosphere. And the main 80 viewers are already old, the post-90s are not interested in this, coupled with repeated program settings to produce aesthetic fatigue, so the ratings are getting lower and lower.
In addition, with more and more variety shows, the audience has more choices, once the old variety show, if you can not bring freshness to the audience, entertainment for too long, the audience will be tired, elimination is inevitable.
- Addicted to traffic monetization, deeply trapped in the "plagiarism door"
For the show "Fast Book", there is such a sentence, that is, who is red and who plays with whom. Judging from the guests invited over the years, this is indeed the case. In each episode, almost all the invited people are the current popular CP groups or the stars of popular TV series.
In 2012, South Korean actor Kim Hyun-jung appeared on the stage of Kuaiben as a guest, setting a national record of 2.48 ratings, surpassing Lee Min-ho;
In 2017, Kuaiben invited popular female stars Zhao Liying and Chen Weiting, with a rating of 1.92, comparable to the hit drama "Ode to Joy 2" of that year;
In 2019, the ratings of a program with Deng Lun and Li Xian as guests won the first place in the country in the Shangxing Comprehensive Group, with a market share of more than 11%.
Over the years, celebrity guests have generated high ratings for the show. Seeing the dividends brought by these flows to the program, the program team gradually stagnated in content creation, and there was no more innovation, and it was even once exposed that it copied the game ideas of Han Zongli.
There was a top hat game on the show, and the guests wore a conical triangular hat on their faces and played the pole game, and the funny actions of the guests made everyone laugh. After the program was broadcast, the comment area of the official Weibo overturned, and the top hat game was pulled out by netizens to copy the classic ideas in Han Zong's "New Journey to the West".
This kind of "take-ism" makes the originality of the fast book deeply questioned. And this is not the first time that "Happy Base Camp" has fallen into a plagiarism storm. At that time, when this matter was exposed, many viewers were disappointed in Kuaiben, and did not expect that the program that has always paid attention to originality would also be deeply involved in the "plagiarism door", so "Happy Base Camp" was jokingly called "Cottage Base Camp" by netizens.
- The host's word of mouth overturned
With the explosion of the show, several hosts have also become popular, and it has to be said that Kuaiben is indeed a star-making factory. As the main backbone of the show, He Jiong, in December 2020, received a gift "overturned" and was involved in the "rice circle door".
Some netizens have listed a list of gifts to the "happy family", either Hermès or Chanel. For different hosts, the gifts are different. Some are electronics, some are skin care kits, and some are mother and baby products. Although He Jiong also came out to apologize and explain at that time, this incident put a lot of pressure on Hunan Satellite TV. Xie Na is pregnant and temporarily retired, replaced by various newcomers, and "Happy Base Camp" has long lost its original taste.
The explosion of the fast book is the choice of the times, and the decline is also the choice of the times.
In the first episode of "Hello Saturday" recently, He Jiong was still the original He Jiong, driving the atmosphere of the whole scene, but there was no happy family around. The newly added host obviously could not catch the stem thrown out by He Jiong, and inexplicably felt that Teacher He was unusually tired, without the crazy Xie Na to intervene, and without the vulgar kitsch old road.
He Jiong, the only host left after the revision, should also change the past hosting style, establish a correct host style, and look forward to the future days, Mr. He Jiong can have a more good performance, so that "Hello Saturday" will go further.