Ignition Dimension (ID: chaintruth) original
Produced by Burning Finance
Author | Kong Yuexin
Edit | Deng Shuanglin
With all the controversy, the fourth season of "Talk Show Convention" came to an end. Although many netizens said that this season is not as "good-looking" as the third season, and Xiaoguo has not brought out the next "Li Xueqin", it is undeniable that the performance form of talk show has been completely on fire.
After watching the newcomer performances of the explosions one after another, Luo Yonghao couldn't help but congratulate Li Directly in the show: "Your circle feels like it is going to explode."
This outbreak is not only reflected in the rising number of online programs and the number of hot searches on Weibo, but also in the new people who continue to enter the game, the labels that are lined up all over the country, and the audience who are more and more receptive to the comedy form of talk shows.
A few years ago, the ticket price of open wheat performances in Shanghai was only 10 yuan, and some clubs even entered for free. But now the situation has changed, and the ticket price of the clubs under Xiaoguo Culture has been sold to 280-880 yuan.
The price increase is not a problem, the biggest problem is that it cannot be bought. On some second-hand trading platforms, the ticket price of popular actors has even been fried to thousands of yuan. Li Even joked in the show: "Talk show tickets are hard currency, and actors can 'pay' when they go out to eat, and they can use tickets to 'arrive'." ”
According to the "2021 May Day Performance Observation" released by Damai Network, the box office of talk show performances has tripled compared with 2019 (2020 is not of reference significance due to the impact of the epidemic), and the number of people watching the show has increased sixfold.
According to Rhino Entertainment, during the National Day, the ticket price of offline talk shows around the country is close to concerts, and according to Damai's "heat ranking", the performances of "heat NO.1" in many places are talk show categories.
When Burning Finance went to the talk show offline to open the wheat live experience on the weekend, it was also found that the small venue that could only accommodate 60 or 70 people was almost full, most of them were the audience who came offline for the first time under the influence of "Talk Show Conference 4", couples, friends, colleagues, classmates, and people who came to see the talk show in groups of three or three or two abounded.
Most of the actors who participated in the opening of the wheat on the same day were not very mature, and the two college student audiences on the scene told Burning Finance, "Many of the actors' passages are very new at first glance, and there are few mature actors who have performed more than dozens of performances that have polished the text." However, the audience still gave understanding and applause, "We actually want to see a formal talk show business performance, to see if the scene will be more collapsed or it will be much more funny." ”
Today's talk shows have long since left the "niche" circle and become one of the leisure and entertainment products for most people after work or vacation.
Talk show actor Pi Qiu told Burning Finance: "When I first entered the industry in 2013 and 2014, there were dozens of people in China who said talk shows, and at that time, some of us joked, and these few people also licked their faces and said that it was an industry, and a bus could put the industry 'one pot end'. ”
But now, almost no one can deny that talk shows have developed into an "industry." Compared with the long decades of industry growth of American talk shows, with the "East Wind" of online variety shows such as "Spit Conference" and "Talk Show Conference", Chinese talk shows have successfully "lowered the threshold", allowing the audience to understand the difference between talk shows (stand-up comedies) and stand-up comedy, talk shows have also evolved from "niche imports" to mass entertainment methods, and the industry has also rapidly entered the mature period of blossoming results from barbaric growth.
After Li Tian was "born out of thin air" with "Spit Conference" and "Talk Show Conference", many people have compared Li Tian and Guo Degang. Many people believe that Li Yan influenced the domestic talk show industry, "one person influenced an industry", and this scene also appeared in the cross-talk field of that year.
At that time, Guo Degang led the Deyun Society, relying on the recorded program to be repeatedly broadcast on television, and the audience filmed the performance video spread virally on the Internet, accumulating the first fans of the Deyun Society. In the case that the cross-talk environment is about to "die", Guo Degang went up against the economic situation of the industry, driving the gradual decline of traditional arts to become popular again, allowing more audiences to enter the offline theater of Deyun Society.
At this stage of the development of talk shows, although Li Shi does not yet have the status and strength of Guo Degang, when asked many talk show actors, "Who is the leader of the domestic talk show industry?" At that time, most of them would invariably say Li Shi's name.
Alphabet has also reported that from a certain point of view, Li is trying to become Guo Degang in the field of talk shows, pouring his influence into a vertical category of comedy and promoting its development.
Chenxing Drama Club talk show actor Dajun directly said: "Although the field is different, Li Shi has become the benchmark of the industry like Guo Degang in the talk show industry, and he is also a role model and direction for many talk show actors, including me, to learn from." At least we know that our attempts and efforts are valuable, and we can also see the development prospects of ourselves and the industry. ”
It can be said that in the minds of many comedy lovers, especially young audiences, Li Shi already has the influence of Guo Degang and is the absolute "first person" in the domestic talk show industry.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="46" > more and more people talk about talk shows</h1>
The most direct embodiment of Li's influence on the talk show industry is that more and more newcomers are entering the industry.
"Anyone can talk about a five-minute talk show." This sentence is not only a call and vision of Xiaoguo and Li Shi, but also a common situation in the talk show industry.
Ted, who is engaged in the medical industry, is a "newcomer" who entered the market at the end of April this year. In fact, as early as two years ago, he saw someone in the circle of friends share the offline performance of the talk show, and after watching it, he said that he had never seen such a "refreshing" form of comedy, and the idea of joining it quietly sprouted in his heart.
Until this year, Ted made up his mind to try acting. But now because there are more and more people who want to try to open the wheat, "the venue is relatively small, and now after signing up for the open wheat, the club will have a screening process, such as reviewing the manuscript first, and after the draft will allow people to come on stage to talk for three or five minutes." Ted said.
This kind of "seller's market" was simply unimaginable a few years ago. Pi Qiu recalled that at the end of 2013, when he first went to see a talk show offline performance in Shenzhen, he stood on the stage with old employees such as Cheng Lu, Liang Haiyuan, Zhang Boyang and other laughing fruits, and there were only four or five audiences under the stage, not as many actors as on stage. At the end of the performance, the actor's performance did not last more than an hour, and the audience was encouraged to come on stage to speak, and The ball himself was pulled on the stage to introduce himself. Whether the audience spoke well or badly, they were crazy to encourage and pull people to join their clubs like 'pyramid schemes'.
This early openness and low entry threshold are long-term "reserved attributes" of talk show circles. Xiao Wu, a stand-up comedian who entered the industry in 2015, said: "At the end of 2014, the Beijing Talk Show Club entered our campus performance, and the person in charge of the performance left the contact information, saying that they have open wheat every Wednesday, and newcomers without stage experience can also sign up for practice. ”
It wasn't until 2019 that talk show labels large and small began to emerge across the country. Up to now, Beijing has added more than 10 talk show offline clubs or labels.
Wang Kaifeng, the manager of the Beijing C+ Talk Show Club, told Burning Finance that on the eve of the broadcast of "Talk Show Conference 2" in 2019, he and the "teacher" who brought him into the industry co-founded the current talk show club and became a full-time talk show operator.
"After the broadcast of "Talk Show Conference", the industry's emphasis on actors increased, the number of audiences who came to watch the performance offline increased, and the offline performance of talk show began to sell tickets on platforms such as Damai, and the market was relatively active." This series of changes has given confidence to Wang Kaifeng and others.
Although the situation of the talk show industry has improved in 2019, it is still far less "better" than it is now. One of the founders of Xifan Comedy and a contracted actor of Happy Twist, Four Seasons, told Burning Finance: "In 2019, I quit my other job and began to work as a full-time talk show actor, but the development of talk shows at that time was far from as fast as it is now. A club may have one or two performances every weekend, plus one or two open wheat, and I was gritting my teeth with love. ”
Now, with the explosion of programs such as "Talk Show Conference", the entire industry has shown explosive growth, and the number of talents also determines the scale of industry development.
"The number of newcomers who have entered the industry in recent years has soared 5-8 times compared to the previous actors," Four Seasons said. Mature 15-minute or more content performances can be presented, and there are about 300 people in the country. If you also want to count the new people who have only been on the open wheat, it is estimated that it can be close to tens of thousands of people. ”
Photo / Talk Show Conference
Pi Qiu also said that after the third and fourth seasons of "Talk Show Conference" were broadcast, the number of new people entering the industry also increased exponentially, and the number of people with the ability to continuously output content was also increasing, continuously importing "fresh blood" into the industry.
Seeing the changes in the industry in recent years, Xiao Wu also feels that the industry has developed, "Regardless of whether the performance of the newcomers is mature, there are indeed many people who are willing to go on stage now, and they will also spend time thinking about their own paragraphs and performances offstage." Compared with most of our early part-time talk shows, many newcomers who have been in the industry for a year or two will choose to do full-time talk shows after a few months on the stage, and this is the 'confidence' brought to them by the development of the industry. ”
Nowadays, not only Ted, but more newcomers are flocking to the industry. In an open wheat and a commercial performance in the offline experience of Burning Finance, there are 3 college students who have just "entered the industry" this year, and one of them has just returned from participating in the "youth training camp" training of Xiaoguo. The addition of new people also allows the entire industry to have a virtuous talent cycle.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="183" > Li And the laughing fruit "Empire" behind him</h1>
If you only talk about Li Zhi and Guo Degang, then in the identity of "actor", Li Shi is worse than Guo Degang.
Especially since last year, Li Shi has not personally come off to talk about talk shows. Because of this, some stand-up comedians will question his identity as an "actor": "If the impact on the audience is discussed, then the first person in The country is undoubtedly Li Tian." But within our actors, the more recognized stand-up comedians are Huang Xi and Zhou Qimo, after all, one of them let us know about talk shows, and the other made us realize that the situational talk show structure is so good. ”
And Guo Degang, although he is also active in various variety shows, he is still insisting on his cross-talk special performances and performances, and his identity and status in the cross-talk actor class are almost no one questioning.
However, once Li Yan is added to the laughing fruit, then his energy and influence are somewhat similar to Guo Degang and Deyun She.
It can even be said that in defining industry guidelines and "opening up the mountain and collecting disciples", Xiaoguo and Li Shi can do better, more standardized and enterprise.
Last year, on the show, Li Zhi said that he wanted to write a "Talk Show Work Manual", and this year, the book was not only "available", but also "on the market", and more talk show newcomers could choose to accept the "guidance and edification" of Li Shi and Xiao Guo.
Huang Xi also mentioned in the interview with "People", "Now when you go to the club to see, young people are basically men imitating Li Shi, and women imitating Yang Kasa, which is particularly obvious." They may not realize it themselves, because the creative style of laughing fruit culture may be more influential. ”
Ted told Burning Finance that he also read Li Tian's "Talk Show Work Manual" and thought that this book was very valuable to him, "This book has given me a lot of different ideas, providing a lot of new people can take fewer 'detours' skills, I think one of the most important points is that we actors have to write verbatim drafts, and list the 1, 2, and 3 benefits of verbatim manuscripts, and 1, 2, and 3 disadvantages of not writing verbatim manuscripts." If Li Shi does not share this, then we newcomers may have to explore this habit on our own, and it may take more than half a year to explore this habit. ”
This "Talk Show Work Manual" is also different from the semi-autobiographical and semi-novel publications such as "Laughing Field" and "Waiting Scene" before Li Tian, which talks about "technology, concept, and process", which seems to mean that Li Shi will completely substitute himself into the role of "Birthday Total", to summarize the business model of talk show, and consider the problem from the perspective of the company and the industry.
And all these changes are inseparable from the decision-making of the laughing fruit culture behind Li Tian.
Xiaoguo defines himself as a comedy industry company with content as the core. Pi Qiu told Burning Finance: "Xiaoguo is building a top-down industrial chain, from actor mining to actor training, and even to actor agents, it is firmly in its own hands." And whether it is an online video program or an offline theater performance, Xiaoguo adheres to the strategy of 'both hands must be grasped, both hands must be hard'. At the same time, in the comedy category, Xiaoguo is also pioneering more new attempts, trying to 'fully blossom'. ”
At the same time, Xiaoguo's "ambition" is not only to make it bigger, but also to "become stronger" in the industry, to change the label of "the only weak company in the industry", to build a new ecology of the industry, and to further strengthen its influence in the industry.
Based on this, Pi Qiu said: "From the perspective of the company, Xiaoguo has established a set of development plans for domestic comedians, and this path has also been subtly developed into a set of guidelines in the talk show circle. From the growth path of the actor, the performance fee standard, to the form and scale of the performance, etc., a framework is listed and gradually evolved into a norm. ”
He believes that the two explosive programs of "Spit Conference" and "Talk Show Conference" have allowed talk show actors to see the upward path of their future development, and then formed a strong centripetal force. "This is also an important reason why the industry rules defined by Laughing Fruit are recognized by actors." Pi ball said.
In addition, the impact of Laughing Fruit on the content creation of the talk show industry and the performance form of newcomer actors is also huge, and the "variety talk show" model boosted by "Talk Show Conference" and "Spit Conference" will affect the creation of many offline actors.
At the same time, Xiaoguo's "training camp" activities are also in full swing, and it has indeed played a great role in the exploration and growth of talents. Dajunshi said, "Although talk shows are a form of comedy performance that eats the talent of actors, the training of newcomers can indeed make some newcomers take fewer detours." "Although humor is not cultivated by acquired training, I think these training and teaching materials can serve as 'guides' for newcomers who have recently entered the industry, and their cognitive and learning periods for talk shows will be rapidly shortened compared to our previous self-exploration." ”
The variety show and entertainment model, systematic and corporatized operation, has helped Xiaoguo produce the company's internal "talk show universe"; now, this universe will gradually expand to the entire industry. As Yang Kasa once said on the show, "If the interior is large enough, then the internal stem will become the external stem." ”
Summarizing the contribution and influence of Li Tian and Xiao Guo to the industry, Pi Qiu believes: "As a company with oriental satellite TV genes, Xiao Guo Culture not only has rich experience in online program production, but also with the screenwriter content team with Li Tian as the core, it has quickly launched a formed video program, successfully popularizing the form of expression of talk shows; but also allowing talk show performances that are still growing wildly in theaters around the world to quickly shorten the process of slow development." In the case of greatly shortening the development time of the industry that originally took more than ten years, it can also let us old actors dip in advance. ”
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="184" > talk shows still have a long way to go</h1>
What is Talk Show King? Like Li Tian, it is another talk show "symbol" created by the laughing fruit culture.
The talk show kings decided by the previous "Talk Show Conference" were Pang Bo, Kam, Wang Mian and Zhou Qimo.
On the surface, Xiaoguo seems to be more prosperous than Yue Yunpeng's "one-branching" in the second generation of the Deyun Society, but the fact is just as Yang Meng'en's paragraph said, "There are kings everywhere, short and brilliant." After the show, it seems that no one cares about this "glory", the audience is more concerned about whether there are funny passages in the show, and the contestants are more concerned about their performance and business resources.
Photo / Courtesy of the interviewee
On this year's show, Yang Kasa performed in the paragraph, "Does the king have to be the best person to talk about on a talk show?" Can't it be the most popular person? Although it is a joke, this joke tells the true meaning of the "talk show king": the title is not important, the traffic and monetization are important. According to Ai Man's statistics, Yang Kasa, Li Xueqin, and Wang Mian are the top 3 actors in the commercial value of Laughing Fruit in addition to Li Tian.
This is also one of the important reasons that motivate many offline stand-up comedians to be more active in creating or attracting more newcomers to the industry. As talk show actor Qi Qi wrote in his Weibo profile: "Try to write a paragraph, look forward to being selected by the "Talk Show Conference" one day, you don't have to worry about not selling tickets." ”
The prosperity of the head actor and the prosperity of the industry have brought about changes, which are very intuitively reflected in the income of the actors.
Pi Qiu told Burning Finance: "In addition to the head actor can make money by taking over business, the general performance fee of ordinary mature actors offline can now reach 400-500 yuan a time, a month by running back and forth club performances, you can also get 20,000-30,000 yuan of income, the worst month can also get 1-2 million yuan; there is also a kind of, is to rely on their own self-media traffic, their own ticket sales, may earn more, such as Beijing's talk show actor Fu Hang, his several account traffic is very good, The freedom to sell tickets yourself is also higher. ”
Xiao Qi, a talk show practitioner, revealed, "Some head talk show actors only have a few commercial performances a month, and their monthly income can reach about 100,000 yuan, which can even be worth some actors who take over business." ”
In addition to meeting the actual income needs, the big army master and other talk show actors also pay more attention to the encouragement behind the title of "king", "domestic talk shows currently belong to the 'award waste' industry, compared with the various film queens and other awards in the show business, the talk show king, although not a serious award, is also an incentive and encouragement for talk show actors, as well as the goal and direction of future efforts." ”
Four Seasons also said: "Online programs and offline performances are complementary to each other. The effect of programs such as "Spit Conference" and "Talk Show Conference" is hot, which has really led to the development of the entire industry, including the improvement of actors' income, etc., and then attracted more people to enter the industry to perform offline, and the program can also select more outstanding talents to form a virtuous circle. Ted also saw the audience's encouragement of him to participate in "Talk Show Convention" as the driving force for his own development.
At the same time, driven by the "king" symbol and online programs, the offline talk show industry is becoming more and more "booming".
"Talk shows are now gradually developing like offline entertainment methods such as movies and dramas, becoming a leisure and entertainment choice for more young people, families with parents or children." Now offline performances, I often see people bringing parents or children to watch talk shows offline performances. Wang Kaifeng said.
After asking the audience of the talk show offline performance, he learned that many of them were influenced by the "Talk Show Conference" to watch the performance offline, although it was the first time to listen to the talk show, but they all felt that the experience was good, and the talk show would become one of the choices of many audiences for offline entertainment on the weekend in the future.
Big arithmetic data shows that talk shows are 18-40 years old, the ratio of men to women is 57:43, and they are mostly distributed in first-tier or new first-tier cities.
At the same time, according to the "China Young Comedy Hands Consumption Big Data Report" released by CBNData in 2018, nearly half of the talk show audiences have earned more than 10,000 yuan in months, and the purchasing power should not be underestimated. And most of them "love deeply" talk shows, and there are many cases of audiences trying to become stand-up comedians.
In general, the audience of talk shows is basically young people with strong purchasing power, which also lays the foundation for the development of the talk show industry.
Wang Kaifeng even proposed, "Just like the first stand-up show in the bar, the audience consumes alcohol, or cross-talk consumes tea and melon seeds in the tea house, in the future, clubs can try to increase the catering and other sub-industries that belong to the service industry, and continue to add vitality and new economic pillars to the industry." ”
Although the outlook for the talk show industry looks bright, shortening the development of foreign talk shows for decades to a few years, allowing actors to taste the "fruits of victory" earlier, this rapid growth has also laid some hidden worries.
In fact, Li Shi and Xiaoguo are already in the industry's first appearance of "anti-phagocytosis", the rapid launch of the program, not only let the fourth season of the contestants' creation of "internal stems" flooded (this is also a problem faced by Deyun Society to a certain extent), but also let the head actors of Xiaoguo have almost no time and energy to participate in open wheat or offline performances, which has become a point of concern for many people in the industry and the audience: talk show, which requires a lot of creation, a lot of elimination, a lot of polishing, if you don't open the wheat, don't open the special, How can the artists of Laughing Fruit maintain a sense of stage and accumulate enough segments?
However, Pi Ball has an explanation for this: "For the development of the industry and the progress of actors, the ideal state is of course to arrange actors to polish the special stage as soon as possible while the iron is hot, and tour non-stop." Because it is impossible to get the online performance of the strip, it is impossible to get the line to perform, and the actor urgently needs to reserve new strips. But the contradiction is that the business is not only the actor's need to improve economic conditions, but also out of the company's business plan. Compared with the growth path of American stand-up comedians, the growth time of domestic actors is very short, especially after the "overnight popularity" of the third season of "Talk Show Convention", it is only a year now. In the case of limited time and energy, there is bound to be a state where ideals and reality collide and cannot be taken into account, and all actors are facing this helpless choice. ”
"In this state, if you ask the actors not to pick up business and go down the line to polish their own special scenes, I think it is an overly high standard of professionalism to ask them." Ball thinks.
So, will there be a future for today's hot talk shows? Fast forward five years, and hardly a single stand-up comedian dared to answer that question. However, today, many people in the talk show industry have told Burning Finance in unison, "Even if my talk show has no future, but the talk show must have a future." ”
Resources:
"Huang Xi: Poor, Rich, Good, Bad, I'm the Life of a Talk Show", Source: Characters
"Li Tian" "changed the taste", but the talk show earned it upside down! Source: Bureau of Secret Observation
"Talk Show, the "Monster Newcomer" performed on National Day" source: Rhino Entertainment
"Li Birthday Does Not Rely on Li Birthday", Source: Alphabet List
"Awkward Laughing Fruit Culture", Source: Pin Play
*The title image is from "Talk Show Conference", and some of the illustrations are from Visual China. Xiao Qi is a pseudonym.
*Disclaimer: In no event shall the information herein or the opinions expressed herein constitute investment advice to any person.