The first professional experience of the hot pot chief staff presented in the first issue of "Why "Outwitted" failed to become a hit, especially in the mediocre reputation of the platform represented by Douban, and it remains to be seen whether the follow-up program can gain a firm foothold in the Q2 variety show market.
Text | Little Dong Dong
Last week, Mango TV and Southeast Satellite TV jointly launched a new career experience variety show "Why "Wisdom" Wins", the name of the program is taken from stand-up comedian Xu Zhisheng and He Guangzhi, inviting these two colleagues and friends as resident guests, the program team really understands the mind of CP fans.
Previously, it was also inspired by the names of resident guests and attracted the attention of CP fans, as well as Mao Buyi and Li Xueqin's resident "Mao Xuewang", this show is based on the friendship and resonance between them, and the director team launched customized content creation.
Judging from the creation path and naming method of "Mao Xuewang" and "Why "Outwit", variety shows named with guest names are quietly changing in the way of creation, audience, and dissemination, especially the content of adding code to stimulate CP has gradually become a major focus of program creation.
1
From "Mao Xue" to "Outwitted", the differentiated experience of CP sense
Like the talk show "Kangxi is Coming", which once swept the two sides of the strait, the program titles of "Mao Xuewang" and "Why "Outwitted" are all integrated with the names of resident guests, and the guests' performance in the program has distinctive characteristics, providing users with content materials of a certain magnitude.
Watch "Mao Xuewang" first, CP sense has multiple exits, so that users are tired of it. First, there are friends CP, resident Mao Buyi and Li Xueqin themselves are a group of friends CP who have met and get along comfortably because of "Talk Show Anti-New Year's Eve", in addition, flying guests also have new CPs, such as Zhang Yuan and Lu Hu's Laihu brother CP, Guo Qilin and Yan Hexiang's Xianglin CP, these CPs with native friend relationships often add to the program effect and bring more knocks to users; The second is to discuss topics related to CP, such as the CP of spicy Yoko, which has a very comedic effect; Third, the CP "Shining Days" of the program IP has been mentioned many times, and it has also generated heated discussions with the topic of dream linkage of "Love Only" starring Wu Lei and Zhou Yutong.
Look at "Why "Outwit", because the strange CP pair of "South Zhi wins North Guangzhi" earlier brought a lot of jokes, the "Smart Win" group of CP settings continues to this show, in addition to experiencing various emerging professions, they need to show a more realistic industry situation to the audience and have a more in-depth "spitting".
In other words, detached from the script content of the talk show performance, they have to improvise the spit of the talk show effect in the variety show field of professional experience, which is a big challenge for He Guangzhi and Xu Zhisheng. Judging from the first program, "Why "Outwitted" presents a content style that emphasizes experience and light complaints, and the CP sense has not fully released the "laughing fruit". "Even if I suck their CP, I am too embarrassed to laugh, and I hope that there will be more laughter in the next few issues instead of inserting boring canned laughter." Netizens commented.
Relatively speaking, the CP sense of the permanent guests and flying guests of "Mao Xuewang" remains online at all times, and the guests of "Why Outwit" need to be further run-in, and it remains to be seen whether the CP sense can gradually get better. This also shows that taking the names of two stars to construct the program name can instantly enhance the popularity of the program with the star effect, but the long-term survival of program IP in the content market still requires star guests to fully release the pure natural CP sense on the basis of the original relationship, which is the key to attracting users to watch and enhance the reputation of the program.
2
The three major stages carry industry changes
Looking back at the variety show industry, there are many variety shows customized in the name of stars, which can be divided into three stages:
The first stage is mainly an interview program, and the name of the program has elements related to the host's name, focusing on star making and column branding. In the early days, chat programs in the mainland were generally named after the host, such as "Lu Yu Has an Appointment" hosted by Lu Yu, "Quiet Distance" hosted by Li Jing, "Venus Show" hosted by Jin Xing, and "Easy Time" hosted by Yi Lijing. Similarly, Taiwan has variety shows with Xu Xidi as the host such as "Kangxi is Coming" under the names of Tsai Kangyong and Xu Xidi, as well as "Miss Buxidi" and "Xidi Want to Talk". During this period, the program name is closely tied to the host, which can not only build the host into a household name, but also brand the program name to achieve a win-win situation between two-way achievements.
In the second stage, the celebrity custom reality show is coming, focusing on unleashing the star effect. In the early days, it was mainly a large-scale production, and there were Nicholas Tse's "Sharp Taste" series and Jay Chou's "Travel Notes" in China, both of which were prime-time broadcasts on satellite TV platforms, all with one or more sponsors, and during the same period, South Korea had programs such as "Xiaolijia Homestay", "Yin Canteen" and "Ginger Canteen", which also brought a lot of inspiration to the track innovation of domestic variety shows; In the later stage, micro-variety shows were mainly used, "Huang Xiaochu's Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter", "Lou Yixiao Meets the Musical", "Hello, Is It Luhan" and "SHU Li Life" (the protagonist is actor Chen Shu) are all micro-variety shows launched on the video platform, and the core audience is the fan group.
During this period, the variety show form became increasingly rich, but the content market was relatively immature, and the audience failed to establish awareness of the new program form, so it often used the star effect to open the topic and attract the audience to watch and understand the program. However, in China's local variety show market, large-scale variety shows are often group portrait shows joined by multiple stars, so most of the variety shows named after stars are high-profile artists like Nicholas Tse and Jay Chou, which can be said to be few in number and fail to form a large-scale situation.
With the advent of the era of micro-variety shows, the boom of celebrity customized micro-variety shows has begun, and basically focuses on travel, recording life, etc., narrowing the distance between stars and fans, and is also a pioneering content experiment for the variety show industry.
In the third stage, focus on CP-type micro-variety shows, focusing on "small but beautiful". At present, programs named after two resident MCs such as "Mao Xuewang" and "Why "Outwit" are relatively rare, which not only require both sides to be equal in terms of variety and word of mouth, but also need both sides to have a certain sense of CP in order to truly achieve the effect of 1+1>2.
At present, "Mao Xuewang" has been broadcast in the form of an annual fan for one and a half years, and its popularity, word of mouth, commercial value, etc. have passed the market test, and the first professional experience of the hot pot chief staff presented in the first issue of "Why "Outwitted" has failed to become a hit, especially in the platform represented by Douban, the reputation is mediocre, and it remains to be seen whether the follow-up program can gain a foothold in the Q2 variety show market.
From star-making to IP-making, and then to content-making, variety shows named after stars still have the "selfishness" of catering to fans' preferences, but the focus of content production is quietly changing, all of which are using mature and well-known artists to create in a new content track, in order to be able to move from the rice circle to the popularization, and then get more users' attention and brand favor.
3
Two major trends hide the emerging future
Backed by three stages, we can also see that there is a clear trend of star customized programs:
First, the program lifecycle continues to shrink and the size of content is shrinking. Talk shows named after the host often have a very long life cycle, such as "Lu Yu Has an Appointment" from 2001 to May 2020 to stop updating, in addition, in 2016, "Lu Yu has an appointment with a big coffee for a day" entered the public eye, so far has done 11 seasons, the subsequent star named reality shows are mostly based on the season cycle, "Twelve Sharp Tastes" (later renamed "Sharp Taste") from 2014 to 2018 did a total of 5 seasons, "Travel Notes" only did one season.
Looking at the duration of the single program, the duration of the single program of "Lu Yu Has an Appointment" and "Sharp Taste" is about 45 minutes and 90 minutes respectively. Nowadays, whether it is the entire life cycle of the IP or the content cycle of a single episode program, the "seasonal program" broadcast by "Mao Xuewang" in an annual manner has accompanied the audience through spring, summer, autumn and winter, and each episode is less than half an hour long. Such a small-volume content mode can not only improve the good-looking concentration of program content through condensed editing, but also save production costs to a certain extent and achieve real cost reduction and efficiency increase.
Secondly, it is difficult to attract investment in the general environment, and the demand for commercialization continues to grow. In the early days, the entire variety show market had less content and a weak sense of competition. With the opening of the popularity of "Lu Yu Has an Appointment" and "Quiet Distance", commercial advertisements continue to file, making people feel that "it takes no effort to get it", and most of the subsequent reality shows named after stars are self-produced cooperative brand programs, which can be completed in one stop from artist invitation, brand sponsorship and content production.
Nowadays, with the changes in the general environment, there are many naked programs, and it is more necessary to rely on content quality and word of mouth to attract the favor of brands. After the launch of Tencent Video's annual variety show "Mao Xuewang", with the continuous rise in popularity and word of mouth of the program, it has successively been favored by brand sponsors, and has cooperated with IKEA, Hisense air conditioning, Pepsi and other brands; Mango TV and Southeast Satellite TV launched the emerging career experience variety show "Why "Outwit"", the name is taken from resident MC He Guangzhi and Xu Zhisheng, and there are two sponsors of Onion Partner and Beijing Tongrentang on the air, which has a certain overlap with the previous "Old Iron We Are Coming", and it is unknown whether it is a brand packaging cooperation.
To sum up, the life cycle of celebrity customized programs is shortening, the volume of programs is shrinking, and commercial monetization needs to be optimized, which are the products of self-iteration and optimization and development of the variety show industry, and also encourage platform parties and practitioners to navigate with CP sense, starting from the actual situation, and find the opening method of program creation and commercial monetization.