The long-dry show fans finally waited for a Ganlin: the Mnet boy band draft "Boys Planet" began broadcasting on February 2, and now the progress has reached the first stage performance.
In the first episode of broadcasting, the program successfully became popular on major platforms with a very absurd "HOT" song by domestic trainees, and more than one video on Weibo, B station, etc. reached millions of views, making many viewers notice the existence of this show; The core audience, that is, the "show fans", also still have the enthusiasm to discuss the draft, and the two groups related to Douban Boys Planet have exceeded 20,000 people. They gave the show a flower name, called "Male Treasure Planet".
《HOT》
For show fans, there are many familiar faces in the show, such as Wen Yechen, who participated in the first season of "Youth Has You", Wang Nanjun and Chen Yugeng in the third season, and Zhang Yixing's trainee label "Chromosome" also sent a person to participate; In the international group, it also includes Japanese players Kazusho Uehara and Daisho Iiji, who have participated in "Creation Camp 2021", and the first C position in the international group is Zhang Hao, a Chinese trainee from Lehua in South Korea.
In 2021, Poison Eye counted the Chinese trainees participating in "Girls Planet" and mentioned that this is the largest "going to sea" in the domestic trainee industry at present - in the case of the domestic draft drawing a rest, going to sea has become the plan B of the remaining trainees.
It's just that the reality is not satisfactory. On the stage that has just been broadcast, Wang Nanjun's group received the script of "Chinese huddles" with national emotions.
After the suspension of the domestic draft, it seems that it is difficult for the Korean draft to continue the idol-career of domestic trainees. Although it can be briefly out of the circle with a funny debut, Boys Planet's popularity in South Korea is sluggish, with a premiere rating of only 0.379%, which is far less popular than the previous Mnet draft.
With the passage of time, the draft may no longer be the "best option" for the trainee industry in South Korea and China.
"Needed" drafts
In the past, the draft was needed by the market.
The domestic public began to pay attention to the "101 model" of the draft, which originated from the 2016 South Korean Mnet's girl group talent show "PRODUCE 101": 100 trainees from different agencies gathered together, focusing on the concept of "national producer", and decided the 11 trainees who finally debuted in a group through fan voting to form a limited group with a limited time. After the popularity of the second season, the "101 model" crossed the ocean and took root in domestic entertainment, forming "Idol Trainee" and "Creation 101".
It is not uncommon for trainees to form groups through shows in South Korea, and there have been group debut competitions created by large companies in the past, such as "Sixteen", which selected the final members of TWICE, and YG's trainee debut show "WIN: Who Is Next".
It is worth reviewing the fact that the "101 Series Draft" was born in the background of fierce competition in South Korea's idol industry. In this context, the number of trainees has long become saturated, and countless trainees have been rejuvenated in order to wait for the ethereal debut promise, and in the end, they may not be able to make their dreams come true. TWICE's captain, Park Ji-ho, who practiced for ten years; Before the debut of aespa, SM company public trainees Gao En and Lami who had been practicing for several years had also left the company.
With the giants of the idol industry like this, it is even more difficult for trainees in small and medium-sized companies to see the future.
Large companies that have formed a brand effect for several years, the core "family" fans even know the company's trainees well, while small and medium-sized companies may not care about their debut, and now the global hit boy group BTS, the first day of debut album sales are only 34 copies. Myths like EXID's popularity with direct shots and the explosion before the Brave Girls disbanded don't happen all the time.
The special feature of PRODUCE 101 is that it provides an opportunity for trainees who have undergone industrial training to be digested by the market. Somi in the first season of "National Chu C" was once one of the contestants of TWICE's debut variety show "Sixteen".
Jeon Akiya (Somi)
At the same time, it is also an opportunity for small and medium-sized company players to "come out". Small and medium-sized companies may lack publicity funds, concept creation is not elaborate enough, there is not enough gorgeous makeup and enough exposure resource channels, and their trainees are solved after breaking the barrier and becoming members of Mnet's group - "PRODUCE 101" in the third year of the debut group IZ*ONE, the debut of the debut album music program wore all Chanel.
Moreover, the timing of the appearance of "PRODUCE 101" can be said to be almost "just right".
The head company of Korean idols represented by SM was just in time for the smooth transition period of the group. According to the Chinese algorithm, the four generations of men's and women's groups launched by SM Company are NCT and Red Velvet, and NCT focused on "unlimited expansion" after its debut, and there is no shadow of five generations of boy bands so far. The fifth-generation girl group AESPA was belated in 2020, with an interval of 8 years between its debut and its predecessors, and after its debut, it was jokingly called "Zha" by domestic Korean fans, which means "difficult birth" like Nezha.
YG launched two boy bands in 2014 and 2015, and the fourth generation of girl group BLACKPINK also debuted not long ago, and the successor of the girl group is still preparing to debut. JYP's TWICE won one of 11 music shows with "CHEER UP" in 2016. BTS was in an important period of popularity at the time, and Bighit naturally had no time to develop a new group.
Therefore, the birth of the "PRODUCE 101" series of drafts does fill the freshness of the audience: the traditional trainee debut show may eventually depend on the eyes of the boss and the judges, and under the "101 model", the mentors only make evaluations according to the stage, and the decision on the debut list is completely in the hands of fans, even if a trainee is not good at singing and dancing, but has audience popularity and enough popularity, he will enter the debut list.
KPOP has been planning to go to sea for many years, and it is also beginning to see the flames of success at this stage. At the end of 2015, BTS's mini 4 album was shortlisted on the US Billboard 200 album list, and the world paid more attention to KPOP, and the YouTube playback of many Korean group MVs rose again and again, with both a stage and a variety of plot lines of survival battle drafts, naturally there is also an opportunity to occupy overseas markets.
The "101 Series" became popular, and the debut troupe launched after that was all shaded by the long-tail effect of the draft. Even with the last "PRODUCE X101", the debut group X1 only had time to release an album, and this album sold 640,000 copies, which squeezed into the top five in that year's Hanteo album annual list.
Times and opportunities
However, times have indeed changed.
In 2021, Mnet launched the girl group draft "Girls Planet 999", and the Kep1er that was finally born will return three times in 2022, and the sound source airborne results of the last return to the main song have been outside the top 100 on the Melon list, and the number of likes in the first hour of the main song of the three returns has dropped from 2262 to 843, which can almost be said to be a regression every time. The girl group CLASS:y that debuted in the MBC draft "Heartbeat After School" did not get one of the hit shows.
Kep1er
The draft has not become "new". The weather-beaten show fan is no longer the fan who clicked on the draft for the first time and knew nothing, and everything is advancing at a speed of eight hundred times. The show fan pigeon who chased from South Korea 101 to domestic 101 told Poison Eyes: "After watching the first stage of "Male Treasure Planet", you can roughly see the debut list, and some people can introduce themselves for five minutes, which is too obvious. ”
The "fake" controversy of the "PRODUCE 101" series broke out after the finals of the fourth season, and the debut group was disbanded half a year, and IZ*ONE, which was active at the time, was also criticized by South Korean public opinion, the return was postponed, the footage of members in the variety show was cut, and the restructuring of the debut group I.O.I. in the first season finally failed.
According to the final investigation results of the police, the entire series of "PRODUCE 101" was fake, and the entire series was different from the audience's voting results, and the chief producer An Joon-young was also imprisoned. MBC TV's investigative program PD Handbook published a special on the "PRODUCE 101" series of frauds, in which a photographer interviewed: "I will be told to shoot more of a person, including what kind of picture to shoot him, and there are instructions." ”
The representative of the brokerage company also said: "Everyone knows that this kind of program is arranged to some extent, which is common knowledge in the industry, and when I sent my children to the program, I thought that I was expecting 'maybe 5 places are fair,' and I didn't expect 11 people to be fair." ”
The impact of vote fraud is huge: originally the "101" series of drafts stood out because "the debut team candidates are all voted by the audience", and now the votes are fake, and the number of shots seen by the audience is also tricky - if the original brokerage company can trade the debut candidate with the platform side, then the "opportunity for small and medium-sized companies" in the original position is actually a big question mark.
The decline in the quality of trainees is also a factor. The draft goes on year by year, and even in South Korea, where the idol industry is so dense, trainees do not grow so fast. When "Girls Planet 999" was broadcast, many domestic netizens thought that the quality of trainees was not as good as before.
Netizens commented on the male treasure planet
What's more, the debuted members do not seem to "cherish" the hard-won opportunity so much. The C position of the second season of "PRODUCE 101" Jiang Daniel exposed the news of his relationship with his predecessor Park Zhiho, which was always after the group was disbanded, and Jin Duojuan, who debuted in fourth place in "Girls Planet 999", was exposed to the return of the third mini album of the group that was in love and colliding, which caused negative public opinion.
Korean TV has sensed the retreat of the audience's freshness, and has introduced a large number of Japanese AKB48 idols since "PRODUCE 48", and "Girls Planet 999" has played the signboard of an international draft.
But viewers who have chased "Girls Planet 999" in real time know that the voting weight of fans in each region of the show is different, and the final ranking of the debut night will be weighted proportionally, and the weight of the vote of the Korean audience is much higher than that of overseas, and the overseas popular members are likely to lose the election after the voting weight calculation. Since then, many show fans in China have declared that they will never "feel true feelings" again.
If the draft cannot select enough stunning high-quality idols, it seems that it is better for the public to return to the embrace of stable and perfect packaging of large companies.
It just so happens that the head companies that were originally dormant have launched new groups on a large scale in recent years. In terms of girl groups, HYBE launched two girl groups a year after its debut last year, Newjeans debuted only 7 months ago, and the new song "Ditto" reached the first place in all music source charts (Perfect All Kill) more than the record held by BTS, becoming the song with the most PAKs in KPOP history. In terms of boy groups, although the new boy bands have been criticized for their lack of sound sources, the recently returned TXT all-round entered the Melon daily list, and exceeded 2 million sales on the sixth day of release.
The new group "Reborn" launched by a large idol agency has indeed divided the KPOP audience that would otherwise have flowed to the draft group.
When the domestic draft came to the end, "Sister Lang" and "Phi Ge", which gathered artists who had debuted for many years, sprang up, and when "Boys Planet" was broadcast, the draft "PEAK TIME", which allowed idols who already had debut experience, was broadcast, with a premiere rating of 1.298%, more than three times that of "Boys Planet".
Whether this will lead to a new situation is still unknown, but it is indeed time for the Korean talent show, which is no longer "fresh", to write a new story.