Image source @ Visual China
Text | Shang Cain Society, author | Lingzhu, edited by | Zima
Recently, the Korean love variety show "Single is Hell" launched by Netflix has exploded, and female guest Song Zhiya has brushed various social platforms such as Douyin and Weibo, and the topic of love variety shows has once again been pushed to the forefront.
At about the same time, on December 29, 2021, the news that "Happy Base Camp" announced that it would be suspended was on top of weibo's hot search, and a generation of "shenzong" finally became a memory. Netizens have sighed, "Although I have accompanied my entire youth, I have not seen it for a long time." ”
The classic old variety show has declined, the "small and beautiful" love variety show stands in the spotlight, and the staggered replacement of variety shows is like a mirror reflecting the ups and downs of the variety market.
According to incomplete statistics, in the list of 2022 variety shows released by the five major platforms of Aiyou TengmanG B, Youku ranks in the forefront of the number of variety shows with 31 variety shows, and Mango TV will launch 26 files, Tencent Video 25 files, iQiyi 22 files, and B station 10 files, showing a trend of a hundred flowers.
Judging from the types of their respective film lists, as the talent show is hammered, the music variety show is difficult to sing, and the marriage and love variety show has become the "place where soldiers must fight" in the new year.
A variety of subdivisions around the marriage and love variety show have also surfaced, maternal and fetal solo, shared love, script killing love, divorce variety show, etc., love variety show is becoming the next variety show trend.
01 Pick up the girder of the variety market
In recent years, the variety shows launched by various David TV and platforms have not been too innovative in the model, so the effect is becoming more and more bleak.
The music variety shows represented by "The Voice of China" have been weak in recent years. According to the "2021 Music Variety Market Research Report", from 2017 to 2021, the number of music variety shows has gradually declined, and a total of 26 music variety shows have been launched in 2021, down 21% year-on-year.
The popular talent shows in China in the past four or five years are also not optimistic. There were even magical realism events such as "fans pour milk to call idols", which encountered a strong sense of annoyance from the public.
And the funny variety show seems to be no longer beautiful. "Happy Base Camp", which once dominated every household on the screen, officially announced its withdrawal from the historical stage with the end of 2021. From 1997 to the present, as the leader of funny variety shows, this variety show that runs through almost the entire youth of the post-90s has since come to an end.
In contrast, the love variety show (hereinafter referred to as "love variety") developed rapidly last year, the battlefield was full of smoke, "Let's Fall in Love 3", "Heartbeat Signal 4", "Semi-acquaintance lover", "Goodbye Lover" and so on gradually appeared in the public vision, once ran on the topic of hot search, and occupied the C position of ai you teng mang and other platforms.
It has not only become a "dark horse" in the variety show market in 2021, but also an area where major platforms will continue to focus on layout and development in 2022.
According to the information of each chamber of commerce, at least 17 love variety shows will appear in turn in 2022. This data is not outstanding compared with other categories of variety shows, but the number is the sum of the major platforms in the past few years, which means that the number of love rounds will grow rapidly in the new year.
Obviously, for young people who love to bump CP, this is destined to be a "lively, sweet and sweet" year.
Sometimes, "watching others do something" is like a little spice in life. Talk show actor Rock once said that the greatest hobby of human beings is to watch other people engage in objects.
The audience's love for fried CP has even reached the point of going crazy, and because of this, there are so many film and television dramas that tirelessly group CP, crazy sugar, unlimited themes, no fear of saliva.
Contemporary people live in a crowded crowd, but loneliness is still like a shadow, this "noisy" loneliness, so that young people long for an intimate relationship, more eager for a high-quality intimate relationship, but reality and ideals often run counter to, so they will put their expectations and yearning, pinned on others' "sweet love".
Aiyou Tengmang's sweet pet drama has developed rapidly in the past few years, with a high-density sugar sprinkling plot to become the best meal replacement for young people to fall in love, but due to the low ceiling of innovation and serious routines, the current market has become a red sea, and it is facing the dilemma of "young people are tired", and it is difficult to make a hit.
Following the sweet pet drama, the love variety show has become the home of bump CP. The recent Netflix launch of South Korea's new love roundup, "Single is Hell", has caused a splash of repercussions in various countries. One of the female guests, Song Zhiya, was named a "model of han" by the female audience.
What are young people looking for in a love variety show?
From the perspective of audience groups, the users of love variety shows and sweet pet dramas are highly overlapping, and they are concentrated in the two groups of women and 20-40 years old.
But compared with the sweet pet drama that knows the end of the first episode, the charm of the love variety show is that the more real love is sweet and bitter, and the direction of love also has a distinct unpredictability, CP is not a setting in it, but the existence of reality.
Therefore, compared to a pair of illusory CPs in love dramas, "my CP is actually real" is more flavorful for young people.
This provides the audience with different emotional values, and even this emotion will be bound to the end of the program, thus distinguishing the love roundup from sweet pet dramas and idol dramas.
From the plot point of view, what love provides is not a well-designed love plot, but how real people face their inner world in love.
In addition, the observation room set up by the Love Roundup provides a possibility for young people to analyze the behavior of boys and girls in the first scene, summarize the love experience available to the audience, and achieve "emotional resonance" with the audience. Audiences with relatively little emotional experience hope to gain something in the love roundup, which also makes the love complex more and more develop in the direction of truth and depth.
Yi Nengjing, a "little expert in emotional comments", frequently shared her love experience as an observer in the love variety show "Let's Fall in Love", and her rich love experience and life experience impressed many viewers, and many "pure love little whites" who lacked love experience said: Learned.
02 Humanization has been evolving
In fact, love is not a new category, before the reality show fire in Japan and South Korea invited celebrities to pair up for love, love dating shows have long been presented in a more "ancient" way in the mainland.
Shanxi Television's "TV Red Lady" was launched in 1988, becoming the first program in China to bring "marriage events" to the stage. Limited by the environment of the times, people's "sense of taboo" on the topic of marriage and love has not been completely eliminated, and under the pressure of huge social opinion, the program can only be hastily stopped.
Although this show was BE (bad ending), this "pioneering" program topic really reflected people's instinctive needs for love and marriage, and also laid a basic model for the development of later service-oriented blind date programs.
In 1990, two years after the broadcast of "TV Red Lady", Beijing Television launched "Tonight We Met", which also faced difficulties such as difficult to find guests and boring program formats.
Through the effective combination of blind date matching and game interaction, this show has set a highest rating of nearly 40% in the nearly ten years after broadcasting, contributing to more than 1,000 pairs of good couples.
Subsequently, it is worth mentioning that Hunan Satellite TV launched the "Rose Covenant" in 1998, the first attempt to produce in the reality show mode, the program expression is more entertaining, performative, in the high ratings at the same time, officially caused the first wave of domestic marriage and love variety shows, a total of more than 20 provincial television stations across the country have produced and broadcast TV blind date programs.
The more familiar love dating program after the 90s is "Do Not Disturb".
"Do Not Disturb" is a blind date program launched by Jiangsu Satellite TV in 2010, mentioning this program, a sentence "Can you feel it!" "The brainwashing opening music haunts me. Since its inception, the ratings have gone all the way up, and it is not too much to call it a "phenomenon-level variety show" from the perspective of attention and topicality.
The collision of strong topics and opinions, as well as the form of one-to-many, lights out, makes the blind date program represented by "Do Not Disturb" more dramatic tension than the previous generation, more like a reality show with blind date dating as the main line, through the blind date mode to show the diversity of single people.
In the show, the bold remarks of the female guests and the sharp comments of the host have become the biggest attractions outside of the blind date between men and women.
At the beginning, a female guest Mano's remark that "I would rather sit in a BMW and cry than sit on a bicycle and laugh" set off a subversive discussion about the values of marriage and love, and its hot scene is still vividly remembered.
The love reality show after "Do Not Disturb" ushered in a real golden age, similar blind date programs emerged in an endless stream, and programs such as "One in a Hundred Miles" and "Love Even Watch" earned enough consumers' eyeballs.
Following the "speed-dating" blind date and the "performance-style" blind date, the love round is presented to us in the form of an "observation room + reality show" and sets off a new wave of enthusiasm. This wave comes from a love reasoning variety show "Heart Signal" launched in South Korea in 2017, and the popularity of this variety show has given a feasible sample for the subsequent development of domestic variety shows.
The following year, Tencent launched the self-made love variety show "Heartbeat Signal", the program takes the details of life and emotional trends of single men and women in the "Signal Cabin" as the main body, and each issue of the star heartbeat detective group reflects and interprets the emotional exchanges and heartbeat signals between the 8 ordinary people, and carries out heartbeat connection.
Since the first season was broadcast, many pairs of CPs were born, and the second season has become the ceiling of love, and the sweet aftertaste brought by the "Strange Story" CP composed of Yang Kaiwen and Zhao Qijun has not been dissipated for a long time, and now that the fourth season has been broadcast, it can still trigger a wide range of discussions.
Since then, iQiyi, Youku, and Mango have also successively launched variety shows such as "Like You and Me Too", "Let's Fall in Love", and "Love Dream Space", but in essence, the soup is not changed.
Usually, the general model of love is: let multiple male and female guests get along under the same roof for one or two months, can date freely, and then the stars show the audience's various social interaction patterns for the audience through the perspective of the "observation room".
In this way, the audience can not only see the emotions and stories of the "first scene", but also the interpretation and reasoning of the "second scene", and can feel the breadth of perspective and the depth of value.
This long-lasting love cultivation model will also make the audience have a "onlooker psychology" and satisfy human "voyeurism" of other people's lives.
Things that follow human nature are the most easily sought after, and the love that satisfies people's gossip psychology is not surprisingly loved.
03 From celebrity love to ordinary love
One day in the second half of 2017, the "strictest restriction order" of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television spread in the variety show circle. As soon as the restriction of "all-star variety shows are prohibited from being broadcast in golden files" was issued, popular variety shows such as the Earthquake of David TV Variety Shows, "Happy Base Camp" and "Run It" began to transform from the previous "high" star interactive variety shows to the guests, and a large number of ordinary people poured into the star head variety shows for the first time.
Prior to this, the mainland's "observational" love complex was mainly based on "celebrity hypothetical love", and the more influential mainly had Hubei Satellite TV's "If Love" series and Jiangsu Satellite TV's "Let's Fall in Love" series, both of which were jointly produced between China and South Korea, emphasizing the real dating of single male and female stars with love needs, and several series contributed several pairs of imaginary CP that made people cry and laugh.
Unfortunately, the hypothetical CP is false after all. Out of the variety show, the audience slowly woke up from the "love dream" that was created, although there was no shortage of people like Zhong Liti, Zhang Lunshou, Ying Er, Fu Xinbo, but most of the imaginary CP failed to cultivate the right results, and parted ways after the end of the show, which greatly consumed the feelings of CP fans who were too deep into the play.
Over time, the little thing between the star and the star flipped over and over again seemed to be unable to satisfy the freshness that the audience wanted. As a result, the celebrity hypothetical love variety show declined under the influence of multiple factors, and the ordinary love show ushered in an explosive period in the two years after the "restriction order" with "greater authenticity".
After the Korean variety show "Heart Signal" became a hit in 2017, In 2018, Tencent took the lead in buying the copyright to launch "Heartbeat Signal", which opened a wave of ordinary love variety shows. The following year, the major platforms launched six or seven love variety shows in one go, and it became a common practice for ordinary people to fall in love.
The reality SHOW in which ordinary people participate is also a very chic field, through the traffic star as the "spokesperson" of the show, seven or eight ordinary people emotional collision ignited an emotional spark.
Many viewers said that the guests selected from the original people are more authentic and reliable in terms of occupation, education and other aspects, and most of them have high appearance and are relatively excellent. More importantly, this group of young people is more authentic.
In addition, compared with the fast food fast food type "non-sincere do not disturb", the love complex has a plot to advance, has evidence to follow, and can catch people's attention. The show also set up a lot of game sessions, which are rich and interesting, such as Mini Date in "Heartbeat Signal", and then "Irrefutable Dating".
But even so, it is still easy to get tired of watching more similar variety shows, especially after the love variety show has become the focus of major institutions in the past two years, the number of more content will inevitably gradually converge.
Therefore, in order to attract attention and create topics, major platforms have made more efforts to create differentiation this year, and various "variants" of love have come into being.
First of all, Youku, which is obsessed with the theme of young people, announced some time ago that the upcoming "maternal-fetal solo love roundup" "I have not talked about love" has caused a hot discussion, "Straight men and straight women in love? It's funny to think about it" "It may be the scene of social death", many netizens said that the expectation value was full.
With the change of young people's social style, elements such as "script killing" have also been integrated into the love roundup, and Youku's "Exploring Love Together" combines script killing and love, with brain-burning, plot, and ambiguity, which is a good direction.
In addition, "Today I Started Sharing" is positioned in the big city drifting young people, what kind of love spark can be rubbed between the roommates? The North Drift and Shanghai Drift families should have a sense of substitution for this.
iQiyi's new love roundup "When Friends Are in Love" aims at "What should I do when my friends are in love?" The theme of "Bringing the good friend in love" to the screen.
In addition to the age limit, "Spring Day Delays Departure", "Goodbye Lover", "Splendid Crowd" and so on have set their sights on divorced people.
From focusing on celebrity love, to focusing on celebrity love, from blind date programs to divorce variety shows, from love experience programs, to love observation programs, to the emergence of divorce, shared housing, maternal and fetal solo and other variety shows... Lian Zong has been looking for breakthroughs in theme and form.
04 The love variety show routine is too deep
Although the form of love is constantly updated, it may not be able to make the audience feel novel. Because compared with the form of love synthesis, the guests and the plot itself are the core of the audience, and the three elements of appearance, sweetness and dog blood are indispensable.
This point does not deviate from the traditional idol drama and the current sweet pet drama, but the three are more biased in content.
In the love observation program dominated by ordinary guests, each vegetarian is actually not a "vegetarian", most of them have a high appearance that can be compared with star idols and a luxurious top match of life experience, from the lineup is very eye-catching.
And in the direction of the plot, head-scratching, dating, wall banging, love letter confession... These sweet pet dramas should have all kinds of scenes, in order to gain the favor of the beloved object, male and female guests frequently amplify the moves, dazzling and eye-catching.
In the variety show "Let's Fall in Love", Wu Xin and Pan Weibai were arranged to date together, and the interaction at that time is still vividly remembered, there was a date, Wu Xin fed Pan Shuai ice cream, Pan Shuai leaned on Wu Xin's shoulder, and the sweetness index exploded, so that after several years, there were still viewers still bumping "Koala CP".
In addition, the ups and downs of the dog blood plot are essential. Compared with the traditional "speed-matching" blind date, the uncontrolled hormonal collision is most likely to produce the stimulation scene of the Shuluo field, some men and women compete for the wind and jealousy, and the conflict scenes such as "Aquaman" and "Queen of the Sea" are not lively.
Threesomes, there must be a Shuluo field, last year's broadcast of "Witty Love" gave birth to a lot of Shuluo field famous scenes.
For example, female guest Lu Shan and male guest Wang Lu in the previous issues were a group of CP favored by the public, who knew that after another male guest Wulan joined, the female guest was cut off by Wulan halfway, a "battle between two men" was staged, Wulan frequently destroyed the romantic dating of the first two and showed their "man charm", and finally "won the beauty return", and the audience was excited.
The other three entangled guests - female guest Zhang Huixian, male guests Ni Jiapei and Cui Yutong, and girls must choose one of the two boys as the "male protagonist". In the face of the favorite girl, Ni Jiapei changed his shy style and shot straight balls, and Su you sweetly spoke so that the love scouts in the observation room were also moved, and Cui Yutong watched Ni Jiapei's famous scene of "wall bang" Zhang Huixian in front of him, which filled the delicate atmosphere.
The triangle horse-grabbing plot of "he chases her, she looks at him, she can't fly with her wings" makes the audience enjoy watching it. Outside the show, the real sense of truth began to analyze the words and deeds of the guests involved in the love roundup from the perspective of God, and even upgraded it to a and slag tasting conference, where fans were tearing each other apart in the bullet screen and super words, but the melon eating masses were very enjoyable.
After many sweet dates and competitive conflicts, male and female guests "cultivate positive results" in the show, forming CP, and fans who bump into CP from the beginning are often overjoyed.
However, there are also many "sequelae" caused by the excessive strength of the CP, and the audience who loves to watch the love roundup is most afraid of your CP after the end of the show.
Among them, the pair with relatively large shocks, Wu Xin and Pan Weibai's "Koala CP", in 2017, from strangers who "know but don't know each other" to "I like you" confessed to each other, all the way to high sweetness and countless powders, and the influence has lasted for 3 years. It was not until Pan Weibai posted an official announcement of marriage on Weibo in 2020 that this farce of "fake CP" ended.
It is not uncommon for this kind of program to have a glue-like CP to the end of the program, and most of the CP can not escape the end of BE, which also leads many viewers to suspect that the true feeling of their efforts has been "played" by the script of the program, and the audience suddenly perceives that the love in the love complex is not a hormone-driven heartbeat, but an organized and planned strategy, and over time it is immune to the love synthesis.
Of course, there are also many viewers who "clean up the self" and have never entered the game. Many people think that how can those shuluo fields, dog blood bridges, and even those sugar-sprinkling sweet plots shown in love variety shows happen in a month? Even if cp who loves to fall in love with the comprehensive, it is only regarded as an idol drama and will not go too deep into the drama.
In fact, how to balance "drama" and "synthesis" has always been a headache in the love industry, and the realism and drama are often torn between each other and difficult to grasp. How to reduce the existence of the "script" and ensure the authenticity of the development of things at the same time, but also cleverly create conflicts, the point of view is the direction that love needs to work hard.
Instead of excessively pursuing sugar sprinkling and dramatic effects and becoming distorted, it may be better to combine love with socially meaningful and more grounded topics such as income, childbirth, and pension, and be closer to the audience's life.