During the Spring Festival, a famous variety show scene that allowed the judges to taste "defense" (homophonic stool) ignited the creative enthusiasm of netizens, allowing Shandong's famous dish Jiuzhuan Dao to open the New Year's traffic password, netizens joined the "Nine-turn Intestine Revitalization Competition", and also unexpectedly brought the variety show "Top Chef" back into the public's vision. With the rise of the Internet archaeology boom, can old variety shows become popular again with the help of these highlight clips?
Author | Hu Jinyun (Author of Cultural Industry Review and Research Fellow, Sanchuanhui Cultural Tourism Research Institute)
Editorial | time
Edit | peninsula
Source | Cultural Industry Review
"Did you taste it yourself?"
"Tasted a piece."
"How does it feel?"
"I removed most of the fishy smell of the intestines, but I kept some of them, and I think keeping some of them to know that you are eating large intestines."
"Did you keep it on purpose?"
"I left a part of it during the cleaning."
"Was it intentional or careless?"
"It was intentional."
△Source: Seven o'clock every day
This dialogue comes from the 2012 Oriental Satellite TV imported foreign copyright to create the food competition reality show "Top Chef", after completing the entire dialogue, judge Cao Kefan cut off part of the large intestine with elegant movements, and then left the classic emoji "I hate JPG", 17-year-old little fat chef Yu Tao used his strength to explain to Cao Kefan what is called "life is impermanent, large intestine covers small intestine".
Because Cao Kefan commented that the previous contestant's large intestine was overtreated and the large intestine lost its original taste, Xiao Fat asked him to ask for benevolence, combined with his expression after eating, netizens made up a Yang Mo drama, that is, Xiao Fat used the original taste of the large intestine as a plan to let the three judges eat "defense", referred to as "one plan to harm three sages". What an exciting plot, isn't this more exciting than watching a variety show in the advertising pile?
Up to now, the original clip "Top Chef Retains the Original Taste of the Great Intestine" has attracted more than 20 million views on Station B. It is worth noting that the hot comment of this video is to correct the name of Xiao Fat, that is, what Cao Kefan eats is most likely not a "defense". But in the imagination of countless netizens, that is "defense", and even only "defense" can make this carnival seem reasonable.
The program team of "Top Chef" probably would not have imagined that in an era of variety shows, the works of 11 years ago could still make waves on the Internet.
In fact, this is not an isolated case, you never know what an old variety show will become popular again.
Archaeological era
The popularity of the nine-turn intestine has made "Top Chef" usher in a highlight moment on the Internet. When it comes to catching horses and being funny, variety shows, TV series, movies, interviews, advertisements, etc. many years ago can be described as a treasure mine.
Trendy retro
The Taiwan puppet "Forbidden Peak", which has been "embarrassingly dancing" on the Internet for many years and contributing the famous phrase "You don't fight anymore", comes from the distant year 2004.
Yue Yunpeng's famous work "Swallow, How Can I Live Without You" comes from the movie "Passing Through Your World" (2016).
And the hot terrier "Ouhao, you are my god" in 2022 is Haiqing's affectionate confession of kneeling down on one knee when he was a judge of "Happy Boy" (2013).
Actor Yuan Li's famous remark: "Teacher Siqingova recently got sheep placenta, can this be said?" From the launch of the TV series "Mother Mother" (2011).
Yang Mi's classic advertising slogan "Are you okay" (2013) when he endorsed Yumei became a "mouth substitute" when netizens were speechless about the behavior of others under the change of online context.
And so on, and "Where Did Daddy Go 3" (2015) Lin Yongjian's classic dialogue "Are you the devil?" I am your father", the classic game of "Happy Last Season VS Happy This Season" in "Flowers and Teenagers 2" (2015), Xu Qing's statement of "everyone in the previous season is normal" eclipsed the post-editing of Mango, which has always been criticized for "love to provoke things".
Similar to the nine-turn large intestine terrier, Han Hong's encounter in "The Voice of Chinese Dreams" (2013): a contestant man claimed that "my high voice is higher than everyone else", and the judge Han Hong asked him to "give me a high note that destroys the world", so "three days and three nights, three more midnight" magic sound filled his ears, this show is also nicknamed "The Adventures of Han Hong".
This kind of show, which originally wanted to test the trainees, unexpectedly deflated the mentor, and for a moment did not know whether it was torturing the trainees or the mentors, but it was this unrehearsed interaction and jokes outside the script that made it different from the stylized jokes created by the script, full of "realism". People laughed loudly during the "archaeology" process while saying "the old terrier who died for ten years suddenly attacked me", and even listed "Internet masterpieces".
These ancient fragments are widely circulated on the Internet, and under the blessing of countless netizens' "archaeology + second creation" combination fist, people often look new, and this kind of "renaissance" has become a new trend. Under the trend of revival, the exposure of old variety shows has been improved, and variety shows such as "Variety Show", "Flowers and Youth" and "Dance Forest Conference" have experienced a restart after being suspended, and this trend has also given birth to some new programs.
Renaissance, old and new
In 2022, benefiting from the tricks of the B station up owner and Douyin blogger, the ancient variety show "Boys and Girls Rush Forward" has become popular on the Internet again, and many people have expressed "I'm sorry, I have to commit this", turning around and signing up for the show for their wronged friends and even the chairman of the company, looking forward to seeing them break through and fall into the water quickly. Old variety shows such as "Do Not Disturb", "The Strongest Brain" and "The Voice of China" have also become the beneficiaries of this boom, and the registration channel has flooded with a large number of "lack of morality" netizens, and with the help of the subjective efforts of netizens and the Internet, these old variety shows that were once only "out of reach" in TV have become popular again in a very new way.
Station B even took advantage of the situation to cooperate with Anhui Satellite TV to launch a program of the same theme full of station B characteristics "Bilibili Rush Forward". The show constructs a middle two's "dragon slaying" worldview, that is, "the sleeping dragon awakens and tries to push the world to the abyss of destruction, while Bilibili TV Jun needs to gather dragon slayer warriors, raise the sword of happiness, defeat the dragon, and save the world." Each episode has twelve warriors to break through the level, and the warriors who successfully break through the level can successfully rescue the "barbadster merchant" waiting at the end.
In addition to the two-dimensional element, station B also fully "utilizes" the UP master, allowing the UP lord with a certain degree of popularity in the station (Ah Mo Zong, Lahong Sang, Tony OOKII), Internet celebrities (Yamashiro Oguri Shun, Yongqi Mo, Wang Jingze), stars (Yammy, Duan Aojuan, Lu Keran, Sun Rui) to participate, and this part of the people can rely on their own traffic to edit and share relevant clips to form a secondary transmission boom. The sword of happiness raised by the warriors allowed the show to score 270 million views and 9.2 points (on a 10-point scale).
The alternative recovery of "Boys and Girls Rushing Forward" on the Internet is still "old life and new whole", while some "tears of the times" are not only nostalgia, but towards "new life".
In 2007, when Hunan Satellite TV's classic talent show "Happy Boy" was still in the limelight, Chen Chusheng became the champion of that year, and the song "Has Anyone Told You" spread all over the streets and alleys, and he was in the limelight for a while, but because he missed a New Year's Eve party, he was banned by Tianyu. The runner-up Awakening was also hidden because of a fight with the 2010 Fast Man Champion Li Wei, and the rest of them have their own ups and downs, not going into too much detail, but overall they are not popular.
They are already a group of mushy coffee, but the "re-employment boy group" formed by them is loved by the public because of the "paste" (too much to put down the star shelf) in "Welcome to the Mushroom House", the show has caused countless netizens to urge to change, and many people even filled up as VIPs, and it turned out that there were only one or two episodes. After many considerations, "Happy Departure" came into being. Who would have thought that the god of variety shows would set his sights on a group of pasty coffee in the entertainment industry who have a clear understanding of themselves, and this variety show has created the record of the highest score and the largest number of ratings in domestic variety shows, and they have also become popular.
This "renaissance" tide picked up the tears of the times, but the key to their fire is not the special grace under the effect of the audience's nostalgia, but precisely because the "core" under its ancient shell is not old, and their "network DNA" can be encountered but not sought, and suddenly danced to the audience's "heart".
Looking at the above clips out of the circle and the variety shows that have become popular again and the new programs derived from them, they all show a state of "no terrier and no survival", because of the "terrier", they can be seen by the public, and because they can create terriers, they have the opportunity to be empowered again. The drama and sense of loss of control of the scene has become the most intuitive expression of reality and grounding, after all, the script cannot plan such outrageous scenes. Mel Hurlizer bluntly said in "Laugh Point: A Humor Lesson for Everyone from Talk Comedy Instructors": "Comedy is the currency of the entertainment kingdom". The above examples, the comedy color displayed in the established context, is the intuitive embodiment of the sense of variety show, can provide users with core values, so it can be unimpeded in the entertainment as the main purpose of the variety show kingdom.
We seem to be living in an "archaeological age", whether people spontaneously go to the classic Weibo "MD, the most annoying person X" to check in or indulge in the secondary creation of famous scenes in the past, all indicate our expectations for "internal entertainment living people" and "internal entertainment complex", and the past embarrassment and joy of others have become a "emotional value nourishment library", and have become our source of happiness in the established Internet context.
This is an era in which the audience loves "archaeology" and second creation, and it is also an era in which "comedians" are particularly needed, and even a new type of work in the industry - variety show coffee, such as Yang Di, Shen Teng, Sha Yi, Jia Ling and other entertainers with a sense of variety frequently participate in the recording of variety shows, because in the eyes of the audience they have been equated with "funny". But what is most needed is the "comedy" outside the preset, which is natural but wild, just like the grandfather in the TV series "Family with Children" leading the children to eat "memory bitter rice" (wild vegetables), when accustomed to watching carefully calculated exquisite but homogeneous, advertising water-filled variety shows, this wildness is more precious.
Under this "archaeological" trend, we have witnessed more and more "wild" old variety show clips exploded on the Internet, but although the wildness of the old variety show can always be seen and new, its popularity will inevitably gradually dissipate. The question in front of us is, when the audience likes to search for treasures from old variety shows more and more, in addition to having a certain exposure blessing on the topic parties and programs, can this popularity be transformed into real money, or even "stand higher" to bring a bonus to the current variety show market?
After archaeology
Explosive memes such as "You are my god" and "Nine turns of the intestine" have caused countless imitations and re-creation in B station, Douyin, and Kuaishou, this kind of second-creation video traffic usually bursts out on short video platforms, and the conversion rate obtained by TV media and long video platforms is actually unknown, and you may need to change your thinking if you want to take advantage of the "archaeology" boom to find profit points from old variety shows.
For variety shows that have long been broadcast, the usual profit-making projects such as selling copyrights and advertising investment promotion links of variety shows have been completed. Although there are countless copyright disputes, a perfect film and television drama and variety show has not formed an authorization mechanism for netizens' spontaneous second creation and commercial recreation, which can be described as a long way to go.
If producers and platforms want to use the popularity to further develop the commercial value of "old" variety shows and make them replicable, they need to break the previous established model, but start from the C-end needs to do content innovation, simply put, "listen to advice".
The above-mentioned "Bilibili Rush Forward" and "Happy Departure" are both works that understand the needs of the audience, and their birth is an intuitive case of C-end users promoting B-side innovation. From the perspective of market reaction, the best indication of the consumption potential of C-end users is another variety show. In 2022, Tencent Video took the lead in testing the waters and launched the account-sharing variety show "Shining Days" that records the life status of artists living alone exclusively for VIP members, and each additional effective viewing can divide an extra dollar. According to the "2022 Annual Summary of Tencent Video Creation Platform Billing Cooperation" released by Tencent Video on February 6, the variety show series has more than 11 million accounts, winning the first place in the variety show billing category.
At present, the C-end has released a certain consumption signal, which is a good start, but the overall paid market is in the process of accumulating, and the situation that variety shows completely rely on C-end users to achieve profits has not yet formed, and this trip is still far away.
However, it is undeniable that C-end users are using their own power to promote B-side innovation, which also provides an idea for variety show production, that is, to use these popular and marketable content from the stock to mine. In the long run, we need to think about whether we can build a content matrix library around these "classics", so that it can effectively coincide with the development trend of the variety show industry, so that program copyright, commercial value and benign development of the industry can form a closed loop. Extending the industrial chain through effective operation and increasing the added value of programs, rather than just doing a hammer sale, is bound to be the trend of the times.
epilogue
When our eyes frequently look at the old variety shows, and even after observing the user's psychology to carry out "old life and new rectification", whether it is "fashion is a reincarnation" or the accusation that netizens are too homogeneous and boring to today's variety shows, the audience has their own distinction in their hearts. If the end of popularity is retro, then it is foreseeable that the variety shows that are now disgusted by us may also usher in their era at some point in the future, after all, "Nine Turns of the Great Intestine" also faced the embarrassment of poor ratings and then stopped broadcasting, but it ushered in its spring at the beginning of 2023.