Variety show innovation, where is the new direction?
The "archaeological tide" of the Internet has been scraped from the 07 fast man to "Where Daddy Goes".
"Where Did Daddy Go", which has been broadcast for nearly 9 years, has actually not been far from the center of public opinion. Last year, when the "Brother With Thorns and Thorns" was on fire, Chen Xiaochun's stage style was jokingly called "Jasper who ate dragon fruit" by netizens, and related entries were also on the hot search; this year, Liu Qihong's gymnastics brushed the screen on major short video platforms, and many people prefixed him with "Jay Chou's friend", as well as "little puff's father".
#Where daddy went children have grown up # also from time to time to stir the nerves of the audience that year, more hair dyeing, every day in love, Kang Kang filmed a new magazine can trigger a large number of netizens to discuss.
These discussions have let some data be salvaged: the first season of "Where Did Daddy Go" CSM48 City averaged 4.015% in the city, and each issue was the first in the same period, with a Douban score of 9.0 and nearly 90,000 people participating in the rating.
Although the entire series of "Where Daddy Goes" has come to an end, it still leaves a mark that cannot be ignored in the history of domestic variety shows: it has brought about the boom of "Mengwa Variety Show", driven the construction of variety IP matrix and commercialization, and is also one of the signs of the opening of the era of outdoor reality shows in internal entertainment variety shows.
Looking at the entire trajectory of the show's popularity in the past and its return to the stage, it may also provide new inspiration for the current internal entertainment variety shows that are tired of innovation.
The bright "Daddy with Baby"
In October 2013, the emergence of "Where Daddy Goes" was in a sense the result of Hunan Satellite TV's urgent call for content innovation.
At that time, Hunan Satellite TV, a long-term hegemonic throne in the field of variety shows, appeared a crack that may expand: the ace draft IP of "Super Female Fast Man" is facing problems from the inside out, the bottleneck comes unexpectedly, and it is difficult for ratings and popularity to reach the unprecedented grand situation in 2005.
At the same time, other local satellite televisions are also catching up. The most obvious example is that in 2012, Zhejiang Satellite TV introduced the "Voice of the Netherlands" to produce the "Voice of China" broadcast, CSM44 City ratings exceeded 6%, becoming the annual hit.
Around 2010, young hosts Li Hao, Li Xiang, Peng Yu and Marco, known as the "Four Little Kings of Hunan Satellite TV", left their posts one after another, the first three of whom were directly poached by rival Jiangsu Satellite TV. Producers Yi Hua and Zhang Yibei, who once created blockbuster programs such as "Super Girl" and "Everyday Upward", have also left Hunan Radio and Television.
Zhang Yibei mentioned in an interview after leaving her job: "The Voice of China is an important reason for me to jump ship, I was about to fall down when I stood at the water's edge, and it kicked me to let me leave. I believe that when all TV people see "The Voice of China", they are all beaten up. ”
In 2013, Hunan Radio and Television changed coaches, and Lü Huanbin took over as Ouyang Changlin and became the director of Hunan Radio and Television Station. This year, Hunan Satellite TV made two phenomenal variety shows, which returned to the center of the audience's attention, one was the sound synthesis "I Am a Singer" in the studio, and the other was the extremely innovative outdoor reality show at that time, "Where Did Daddy Go".
"Where Daddy Goes" is adapted from the reality show launched by MBC Television in South Korea, in the East Asian society where the concept of "mother with baby" is deeply rooted, fathers in the family education and life of children growing up, many times belong to the missing role, the program focuses on this, can arouse the natural curiosity of the public, can produce variety effects, but also has a certain social value.
The first to make this program was the top management of Hunan Radio and Television, and at that time, the domestic variety show was still dominated by the program in the studio, and Hunan Radio and Television repeatedly considered and selected Xie Dikui's team.
Xie Dikui is a graduate of the journalism department of Wuhan University, and previously served as a column reporter and responsible editor of Hunan Satellite TV's "Evening News". The Metamorphosis he directed also has similarities with "Where Daddy Goes": compared with the general variety show, they are more documentary, and the main topics are related to family education and parent-child relationships.
In the preliminary preparation, the biggest problem of the program group is to select people - the voice of Korean television stations is relatively stronger, the development degree of variety reality shows is also higher, and the artists will be more explicit about the form of the program. Not to mention that the program group of "Where Daddy Goes" should also consider matching guests with differences.
Xie Dikui believes that adults should have different occupations, different ages, the importance of children's characteristics even exceeds the father, and finally the program group will narrow the scope to 4-6 years old children, because 7 years old is easy to lose childlike fun, 4 years old and it is too ignorant to complete the task.
In the end, Hunan Radio and Television launched a lot of people's offensives, saying that the star families were moved on the grounds that "he could close the relationship with his children", and set up five families: Wang Yuelun, Lin Zhiying, Zhang Liang, Guo Tao and Tian Liang.
Advertisers also have no confidence in the new program, the original sponsors chose to withdraw, 999 Cold Spirit spent only 28 million yuan to win the title of the first season.
But Hunan Satellite TV has shown decisive boldness in innovation: "Where Daddy Goes" was scheduled to be broadcast in the golden file on Friday night, followed by the hit draft "Happy Male Voice 2013". The pre-production team had more than 100 people, the real shooting scene had 45 camera positions, and the post-production material of each issue exceeded 1,000 hours, which was rare at the time.
After reviewing the samples, Lu Huanbin was confident at the screening held at the time: "After the premiere on October 11, the audience throughout China will remember the names of these 5 children. ”
After the broadcast, the first episode of "Where Did Daddy Go" won the top spot in the national evening ratings list, and then it was even more soaring, and the highest rating of the single-issue program in CSM48 City exceeded 5%.
Cute cute babies have captured the hearts of audiences across the country, coinciding with the rapid development of social media such as Weibo, "My father fell into the water", "I am not a big star I am a little princess" and other famous scenes of children, which have become hot topics throughout the Internet. As a result, by the second season, Yili QQ Star, who won the naming fee, spent 310 million, which was more than ten times higher than the first season.
The investment of Hunan Radio and Television has returned, and it has also set off a huge wave in the entire variety show industry in the categories of parent-child variety shows and outdoor reality shows.
"Where Did Daddy Go" disappear?
There was once a common anxiety about the "variety N generation" in the variety industry: for a long-term variety IP, the fifth season is often the key, and most variety IP can not survive this threshold.
For example, before the fifth season of "Strange Story" began broadcasting, the producer Fang Mi did not use himself to make a splash, and in the pilot short film, the image of the show was that patients with terminal illnesses such as declining reputation and IP aging needed to decide whether to survive in painful struggles.
But both "Strange Story" and "Run" have crossed this hurdle, and "Where Did Daddy Go" came to an abrupt end in the fifth season. The sixth season was renamed "Let's Go Together", postponed for a year, and quietly launched in the international version of Mango TV in 2019, and there was almost no publicity before it was broadcast, and the follow-up of the show was also lost.
"Where's Daddy Going" is special. Before it, the parent-child relationship, especially the parent-child relationship between the child and the father, had never become the main line of variety shows.
What's more, the pan-popular topic of "how to educate children in life" is a secretive mass media such as television programs. Many times, the topic of parent-child relationship is more of an "empiricism of the people around you", or compared to the previous generation, or compared to peers, or simply to imagine what a sensible, pleasing child template should look like.
So that after the program was broadcast, there was also a lot of public opinion feedback that other variety shows had not suffered.
In particular, the "period of rapid social media development" at the time of "Where Daddy Goes" is not only the sunrise period of the emerging Weibo platform, but also in the last afterglow of traditional forums. The high ratings of the program point to its high degree of discussion, and the discussions of netizens are all over new and old platforms such as Weibo and Tianya, interpreting the small conflicts in each episode of the program frame by frame.
Almost all children and fathers have been scolded.
Sen Di and Grace have been criticized by netizens for crying, some introverted Yang Yangyang is considered to have a twisted personality, a small family temperament, Kimi with a pot lid head has been criticized as a "mother cannon", the elderly big sister Duoduo is considered to be too precocious and deep-minded; the father's education method will also be criticized by netizens one by one, Guo Tao and Yang Shuo's strict parenting style has been criticized by the whole network, Wang Yuelun is also considered to be too doting on children, even the gentle and enlightened Lin Zhiying and Lu Yi, there are also netizens who pick out the errors and omissions in their education methods.
In 2014, the five fathers who participated in the show jointly released a long article "The Attitude of Five Fathers: Guarding Love in the Name of Silence", opposing the out-of-context propaganda and expressing dissatisfaction with this "carnival".
On the other hand, the show with cute babies as the protagonists has inevitably seen the trend of hyping up child stars. As early as the first season, the Li Xiang family, who lived a high-profile life, matched Wang Shiling with a full-body brand, which caused netizens to "show off their wealth" and other hot discussions.
The fourth season of "Where Daddy Goes" introduced a simple person Mengwa, so that Dong Li, who is still a newcomer in the entertainment industry, brings cute Ala Lei, the picture is very eye-catching, and the CP of Dong Li and Alare is also popular on the Internet. However, many netizens also realized that the setting of adult men and girls to form temporary fathers and daughters actually lacked consideration in warning education, which caused serious ethical controversy.
After realizing the change in public opinion, the program team added safety tips such as "strangers can't eat food" in the subsequent films, and deleted the promotional copy with the words "confession" and "CP", but it is difficult to reverse the negative feedback caused by improper settings, and "Where Daddy Goes 4" has become the lowest season in several seasons of Douban ratings.
In February 2016, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television issued the Notice on Further Strengthening the Management of Programs on Satellite Integrated Channels on Television, which strictly controls the participation of celebrities' children in reality shows and the fact that programs are not allowed to be broadcast during prime time. In 2019, the "Regulations on the Administration of Programs for Minors" was released, emphasizing that programs for minors must not promote the effect of child stars or package or hype the children of celebrities, and "Where Daddy Goes" ended in this atmosphere.
Parent-child content, a kind of just need?
From the perspective of the variety market, "Where Daddy Goes" has become one of the waves driving outdoor reality shows, but from the perspective of content production, the core elements of "Where Daddy Goes" are still inseparable from the two major issues of "cute baby" and "family relationship".
In each parent-child variety show, the most praised is often not crying, sweet and cute children, "cute" is the first meaning of the children in the audience's eyes, they want to see the cute babies and adults get along in the show.
After "Where Did Daddy Go", Hunan Satellite TV has launched the program "First Grade Primary School Season", allowing Chen Xuedong and Song Jia to be the intern class teachers of a group of first-year freshmen, AnQier, Chen Sicheng and other "Mengwa" to gain popularity, the program once received nominations for the Magnolia Award, and Chen Sicheng, who affectionately referred to Chen Xuedong as "Chen Daddy" in the program, still maintained contact with him after the end of the program.
Many parents also have the appeal of going on the show. Li Rui, the village chief in "Where Daddy Goes", once received a lot of calls from the audience after the show was broadcast, and parents said that they were not stars and asked if they had the opportunity to take their children to travel with the village chief. Kuaishou did "Where does MengBao Go" in 2020, which is a vegetarian version of "Where Daddy Goes", responding to the call of vegetarian parents and their children to travel on the show.
From a commercial point of view, Mengwa content also has great commercial potential. According to the "2021 Maternal and Infant Industry Insight Report" released by BabyTree and Nielsen, as of 2020, the domestic maternal and infant market size has approached 4 trillion yuan. Poison Eye's previous articles have mentioned that courses such as "Children's Flat Model Training Class" have always existed, and the popularity of "Where Daddy Goes" has further led to the growth of the number of child star training institutions, and even in today's menacing short video, there is still a lot of commercial implant space for cute baby content.
On the other hand, "Where Did Daddy Go" gained a high degree of discussion, the essence of which is that the core topic of the program, "Family Relations", is highly universal, which can not only meet the audience's voyeuristic desire for stars, but also seems to be low in the discussion threshold of educational topics, and can gain extensive participation and empathy from the public.
After "Where Did Daddy Go", Hunan Radio and Television, which is good at grasping the pain points, launched a series of family relationship variety shows. Star parents observe their sons' lives and make it into "The Boy in My Family"; the clever pulling and thin flow of the husband and wife relationship can be filmed as "The Wife's Romantic Trip"; the father examines the daughter's love experience and shoots "The Daughters' Love"; the adult child gets along with the aging father, which also constitutes "All the Way to Adulthood".
The public viewing habits of differentiated and verticalized rheology have led variety shows to realistic topics with greater national popularity and more social significance. In this field, the emotional topic has a high universality, and it naturally has a sense of plot and high discussion, which is still a variety show topic that is difficult to make mistakes. The national popularity of "Where Daddy Goes" belongs exclusively to the development period of that variety show, which is indispensable to the advantages of time and place, and it brings in many dimensions, affecting the development direction of future variety shows, whether it is topic selection, shooting, or topic creation and risk avoidance.
Nowadays, the phenomenon of fertility policy and population aging is still the focus of social attention, and the emotional issues of practical significance have been flourishing in the field of variety show production, and the "just need" of parent-child variety shows is still there, but it is another thing to really make use of "just need" and find some fresh ways in the two paths of "model innovation" and "track innovation" that are almost exhausted.
Text | Long Chengfei
Edit | Zhou Yabo
Resources:
1. Variety News, Lu Huanbin, director of Hunan Radio and Television Station: Ru Shuai creates "phenomenon-level" innovation
2. Economic Observer, Xie Dikui: The "Industrial Assembly Line" Behind "Where Daddy Goes"
3. Oriental Morning Post, "Where Did Daddy Go": Korean model Chinese design, self-created content to highlight human feelings