Rhino Entertainment Original
Text|Fangzheng Editor|Park Fang
Recently, the industry is very concerned about the topic of variety show self-help.
Before there was the article "The variety show industry may be able to tear down and start over", and then there was a blogger "carpenter should be like a teenager galloping" put forward the view that variety show TOC is the general trend, all of which have driven practitioners who resonate with it to offer suggestions.
In the past few years of the epidemic, the difficulties of variety shows are obvious to all, and everyone is looking forward to a wave of rebound in the industry this year. However, in Q1, the number of new launches has shrunk sharply, the growth of effective playback has been slow, and the market has not improved for a long time, which has spread pessimism.
Source: Yunhe Data "2023 Q1 Variety Show Webcast Performance and User Analysis Report"
But hope has always grown in disappointment.
In the face of the current situation of the industry, peers have previously put forward many suggestions to optimize the current variety show production from a macro perspective, and those beautiful ideas of "tearing down and starting over" (such as: the platform takes 1-2 years to completely self-invest and produce to improve the quality of variety shows) are all exciting to us.
And Rhino Jun's article wants to start from a more intimate micro level and focus on clarifying the question of "how to make money in future variety shows". At a time when the industry is collectively optimistic about the evolution of variety shows to toC, Rhino Jun wants to try to find a practical way to overcome the difficulties in the industry.
Why toC?
At present, the problems of variety shows can be summarized into one thing: money.
After several years of investment winter, this problem is almost irreversible. The reason is simple, the economy is down. The customers who invest in variety shows have no money in the past, the brand budget is less, and the programs that can recruit business and successfully establish projects will naturally become fewer and fewer.
The market performance in Q1 is too telling. Why is there less on the new, and a large number of waist and tail projects have been passed by investment alone; Brands are concentrated on the head projects of at least S level on each platform, and a large proportion of them are still the lowest risk comprehensive N generation.
In other words, the poorer the financial owners, the more obvious the problems of the toB model of variety shows will be exposed. The less money the brand, the more conservative the investment idea, and the number of stars in a project is far more important than the content itself. The less money the brand has, the more this old model is only enough to run the head projects of various platforms, so how can non-S-level projects without "big stars" make money?
Moreover, non-S-class projects face more fierce external competition. In fact, in the eyes of most brands at present, S-level variety shows with explosive strong exposure sound are still excellent targets. On the contrary, non-S-level variety shows are often regarded by brands as projects of the same volume as short videos and live streaming e-commerce, but their ROI is not as obvious as the latter two.
So toC is one of the few ways out for non-S-level variety shows.
In Rhino-Jun's understanding, for producers and platforms, toC here can have two directions of effort: one is to produce programs with the purpose of serving the deep emotional needs of certain types of users. The second is to explore the multiple options of user VIP payment as much as possible, such as single-episode payment, all-season package paid discounts, etc.
For example, "Shining Days" jointly developed by Daqian Film and Tencent Video last year is a show created to serve the daily emotional needs of waist artist fans such as Land Rover and Gao Qiuzi who want to watch idou; This year's Q1 Xiaohuo's drama "Old Iron We Are Coming" is obviously the "drama fan exclusive" of "Northeast Transfer Student". But in fact, these two "VIP only" shows have actually succeeded in attracting incremental users from non-target groups.
In terms of opening up VIP payment channels, Mango TV's "Detective" derivative series is the most representative. Due to the huge number of loyal fans accumulated by the eight seasons of Ming Detective, it has developed the Spring Festival warm-up product "Detective Heart Detective New Year Concert" on the eve of the start of the broadcast in recent seasons, which requires Mango VIP to spend 12 yuan more to unlock, but its paid users can still brush the show to the first place in the popularity of the Yunhe variety show list and Maoyan variety show list.
How to toC?
Variety show toC is actually not new.
In fact, long-form video platforms have been experimenting with this for a long time. As early as 2017, iQiyi launched "Ranyou", which was claimed to be "the first variety show in China's video field to adopt a pay-per-click billing model", but this small variety show did not receive much attention in the popular market that year.
In 2021, Tencent Video took the lead in clearly releasing the variety show billing policy, borrowing the concept of "movie accounting", and the platform stipulates that the "effective viewing unit price" of the variety show is 1 yuan, that is, for each user who makes an effective viewing (any user watches more than 30% of the total content of a single issue), the variety show producer can share 1 yuan.
In January this year, Tencent Video just upgraded the rule, upgrading the "effective viewer unit price" to "content rating unit price" (S+ level 3 yuan, S grade 2.5 yuan, A grade 2 yuan, B grade 1.5 yuan), and for the first time added "self-investment distribution revenue" to the income structure of the distribution account. (Producers are encouraged to self-solicit investment)
At present, a considerable part of the VIP variety shows mentioned above have actually adopted the platform's "account-sharing variety show" model for monetization, and in various senses, such variety shows are encouraging producers to "speak with content strength".
"Shining Days" is a classic project produced by variety show producer Daqian Pictures and Tencent Video billing system, this small but beautiful variety show is committed to presenting the true face of domestic entertainment artists and ordinary people's lives, boldly using the "daily change" mode to create a sense of companionship for users, and its broadcast results exceeding tens of millions of views are considerable.
The show born at the beginning of 2021 can be described as the originator of the small explosive ledger variety show, and Daqian Pictures, which first entered the variety show production with "Shining Days", later created the well-known "Welcome to the Mushroom House" and "Happy Departure", etc., these projects actually prove that the TOC of small-scale variety shows has great promise in the future.
As Q2 of 2023, we find that such toC small variety shows are springing up. For example, recently, there is a drama spin-off small group complex "Wild Boar Family" that has attracted much attention, this program known as "the first vlog group complex in China", because of the filming of "Open Painting! Several leading actors who met in the shoujo comic co-created. They recently opened an official blog to solicit poster poses from the whole network, which is very reminiscent of last year's "re-employment boy group" online recruitment program name explosion.
From this, we can summarize the originality of toC variety shows.
toC variety shows are not influenced by investment promotion, and do not have to deliberately pursue the popularity of the circle, so there is more free space for content expression. They use high-quality production teams to carefully polish content, only to serve a specific group of VIP audiences, through membership income and billing models to try their best to cover costs, this way of making money obviously has a higher certainty.
ToC can also walk on two legs
Of course, toC does not necessarily give up on investment.
Tencent Video wrote "self-investment distribution income" into the latest account sharing policy, which actually sends a clear signal that the toC and toB models are not a relationship between you and me, and investment promotion and account sharing can be double-tracked.
For variety show producers, the matter of toC is actually more of a change in the thinking of the production concept, that is, I want to create high-quality content for specific VIP users. As long as it can make good content, the show may not be favored by the brand side.
"Northeast Transfer Student - Lao Tie We Are Coming" has made a good demonstration, although this "VIP only" show was created by fans of the drama, but it also used the plot to skillfully implant the onion companion dipping sauce, invite Kuaishou heroine podcast string characters and other ways to carry out brand linkage, the show eventually attracted seven sponsorship brands such as Want Want, Philips, and Green Onion Companion.
Daqian Film has also explored a creative path of "self-investment" for production companies through a number of programs. For example, producer Zhao Linlin "shouted" for "Happy Departure" through Weibo to come to the title merchant Wugu Dojo, and the reemployment boy group created a brand theme song for the gold owner immersion in the show, which completely exceeded the brand's expectations.
It can be seen that encouraging variety show TOC is actually essentially encouraging "content is king", and good content is often a good marketing field.
Breaking the rigid toB investment promotion model and developing projects with the concept of "using good content for VIP services", even if it is a small project of grade A and grade B, they have the opportunity to attract gold owners with good reputation, and even grab customers from the S level. Under the cost reduction and efficiency increase, the platform can be very comfortable "walking on two legs" in the future:
One is to develop S-level variety shows based on the toB model, and the other is a non-S-level variety show that the production company cooperates with the platform in toC mode.
The Weibo of "carpenters should be like teenagers galloping" has sparked heated discussions in the industry
The industry has talked about variety shows for so long to save themselves, in fact, the core of this problem is essentially that production companies need to find ways to open up new channels for content monetization in the current market with little hot money. And the basis of all this, the producer finally has to understand:
What exactly is good content? Who am I doing content for? What new content do they need?