Pets
◎Sky cabinet
"Pet singing the protagonist" national synthesis began
At the end of 2021, the tightening of the domestic performing arts environment has promoted the adjustment of the track, and there is a type of variety show that is rarely produced but has been called for, that is, pet variety shows. No matter what stage of life you are in, this kind of variety show can always bring people joy and healing.
Chinese audiences are late to variety shows, let alone see these furry critters on TV. In 1994, Beijing Television launched "Toshiba Animal Paradise", which may be the first time in the history of domestic television variety shows that there are "non-human protagonists" - this variety show is suitable for all ages, becoming the reason for many families to stay in front of the TV, enlightening many post-80s and post-90s cognition of natural science. Hunting and puzzles are important tasks in the first stage of domestic pet programs, and there are many similar programs that have taken over the baton later, such as "Chia Tai Variety Show Animals Are Coming" (2018), as well as some pet cat and dog beauty contests.
Since then, domestic programs on animals have been relatively concentrated on documentaries, such as "We Were Born in China" and "Panda Legend". Compared with wild animals, pets are more "private" and have less room for discussion, so we can generally catch cats, dogs and dogs occasionally in urban fashion programs.
The defeat of the "Celebrity Pet Reality Show"
However, with the development of the economy and the changes in the emotional needs of modern people, after the 1990s Chinese demand for pets surged, China's pet market is expected to reach a scale of 472.3 billion yuan in 2023, cats, dogs and dogs from the past to catch mice, doorkeepers of livestock, has long been turned over as the "master".
Since 2015, there has been a real sense of "pet variety" in China, such as "Wonderful Friends" (2015), which allows celebrities to experience the work of zoo keepers, and "Little Pets Are Home" (2015), which records pets living alone at home. It is worth mentioning that 2017 was a year of surge in the number of cute pet variety shows, and there was "Little Hand Holding Puppies" that let stars lead young children to domesticate puppies, "The Cute Lord is Coming" that lets stars do the substitute "shoveling officer", "Strange Soldier God Dog" that lets stars participate in military dog training, and "Let's Go, Shoveling Officer" that lets Internet celebrities travel with Internet celebrity dogs.
Most of the core content of the above shows is celebrity reality shows, on the one hand, to cater to the audience's star-chasing needs, on the other hand, it also reflects the lack of creative efforts of the choreography team for pet content. Originally wanted to borrow stars + cute pets to achieve double traffic power, but in the presentation of this favor, which also led to the domestic "star pet reality show" did not produce real word-of-mouth works, the second stage of pet variety show is to let pets to the stars to do the background board.
A breakthrough in online documentary content
It is worth noting that in recent years, there have been many high-quality pet (animal) programs abroad, such as South Korea's national family variety show "TV Animal Farm" that has been broadcast for 17 consecutive years by telling warm stories, "Pet Home", which has introduced various pet wonders in Japan for 15 seasons, and "Shimura Zoo", which has been broadcast for 16 seasons. Ironically, when the domestic pet variety show could not touch the doorway, there were already countless domestic porters who became network big Vs by carrying the pet program clips of Japan and South Korea.
Back to the creative end, are China's 60 million pet owners a huge potential audience? The answer is naturally yes, but the real problem with pet shows these days is not that no one watches, that no one does it. Today, surrounded by platforms, ratings, and traffic, Chinese-style pet programs are facing the dilemma of difficult childbirth. Those well-known pet program clips can only be buried in the star variety show, such as the small O, small H, pots and pans and pans Inu family in "Longing for Life", as well as the hair fighting dog that collided with Huang Bo in "Extreme Challenge", the minotaur terrier who collided with Sun Honglei's face, and the aura of the star variety show hit these furry little faces, making them popular smoothly.
In fact, the value of these pets is multi-dimensional, both the role of the show and the IP of the show, and the commercial potential is no less than that of ordinary actors - if you like to watch the relaxed variety show of the stars playing haha, you can stop here; but if you want to get some touching and healing from the animals, you can look down at the third stage of the domestic pet show - the breakthrough of the online documentary content.
Around 2018, video websites entered the quality content track and sprung up in the field of pets. At this time, the domestic pet program is like Alice, who has just found the key, and walked into the heart door of the pet owner - and the key to open the lock is "life and death". A lot of content about pets in the meantime is the documentary observation of the hospital, including "This Life, Please Teach More" (2019) "This Life, Please Teach More" (2020), which punctures the tears of pet owners, and "Pet Hospital" (2019), "Pet Hospital 2" (2020) and "Pet Hospital 3" (2021), which are known as pet versions of "Human World".
The "guests" of one of the Internet celebrity pet shows revealed to me that as a vegetarian, they have a certain view of the authenticity of the show, such as a hostess who takes a cat to see a doctor, just because he chatted a few more gossip, he was labeled as "ambiguous" by the post-editing. There is also a man who found his cat in the hospital with a serious heart attack, and the "net red doctor" said that the problem was very serious in front of the camera, which made the unprepared man cry in despair on the spot, and the program was "full of effect". But in fact, the host learned from other doctors that his cat could still be saved and has now been cured after surgery - so these "documentaries" are just pet-themed reality SHOW variety shows.
Stars and pets, who stands for whom?
In the past two years, perhaps the blue ocean of the pet market has become more and more magnificent, and many new types of content have emerged, such as the reality show "Wang Meow Story" (2020) that invites celebrities to experience life with pets, the reality show "Two Percent Love" (2020) and "Two Percent Love 2" (2021), which invites celebrities to protect stray animals, and the animal-themed puzzle show "Question Mark Face of the Animal Circle" (2020) and "Question Mark Face of the Animal Circle 2" (2021).
These programs still look like a drama to the real rescuers, and it is inevitable that people will wonder: is it the star who is giving the stray animal public welfare platform, or the stray animal public welfare giving the star platform? The answer to this question is naturally different for people with different identities, but at least variety shows can do a positive demonstration for the public, which is always worth affirming.
Pets have never lacked touching topics, in 2021, Hu Ge's advertisement for a pet brand touched the pain points of pet owners with the life of an elderly cat, and the whole network hit more than 10 million. Domestic variety shows have been criticized for plagiarism overseas, but there is always a variety show that netizens are always actively asking for "plagiarism", that is, SBS's national pet variety show "TV Animal Farm", through a moving little story, to carry out a discussion on animal protection, animal rights and interests, excellent pet content is to tap people's hearts, rather than pleasing people's eyes.
You may have rarely heard of any of the pet shows mentioned above, but that doesn't mean there's no power in such a work. In the future, pet content may be able to get more display space, at least pet variety show is a high-quality choice with small investment and high safety factor. For example, Station B said that it will invest in the "Non-Human Games" this year (2022) and continue the race of the cute pet track. I hope that more cute pet programs will appear in the future, not only to prevent celebrities from "collapsing", but more importantly, in the public opinion environment with a more stringent evaluation of high-quality content, perhaps we should gradually shift our attention to the outside of traffic and put it into the essence of life and life.
If entertainment programs have any specific contribution to people's lives, the most important thing should be to soothe people's hearts.