Author| Sugar-fried hawthorn
Edit| Mia
"The end of the film variety is the love show", when all kinds of film and television variety shows began to increase the CP story line to focus on the sugar sprinkling business, what is the "killer app" of the love show?
In the Q1 variety show report released by Artist, the performance of "Half-Acquainted Lovers 2" in all dimensions is still significantly stronger than the Q1 Romance Mean. But it is such a show, both the content quality and the influence are less than expected: as the biggest dark horse that leveraged the incremental market last year, the program Douban scored 7.5 points and 27,000 people participated, but this season both fell to 5.4 points and 5,900 people, and it failed to replicate the popularity of "Bar La La Energy CP".
In fact, this is also a microcosm of the entire romance market, and the comprehensive N representation is now more prominent. "Heartbeat Signal" has developed to the fifth season of Douban scores, the number of people has not exceeded 10,000; "Like You and Me Too 4" was broadcast in January, and Douban still had no score, and the market popularity continued to decline in the new trend of variety shows. And the representative CP that the public can think of today is still stuck in "anecdotal CP", "formula CP" and so on.
Why doesn't the romance look good? In advertisements, the love affair affects the sense of substitution, the frequent collapse crisis destroys market trust, or the CP story line that gradually tends to be decent is no longer attractive... The answer may not be the same, but the same is that we can all feel it: in the fifth year, the romance is becoming less and less "pure". Topic, traffic, popularity, Internet celebrity monetization, when there are too many impurities, naturally destroy the value of the thing itself.
Love is not good-looking, because people are too "pure"
The core of the urban romance complex is people, but the "love and hate" of the love complex and the amateur guests is really difficult to say. Each stage has its own "suffering".
Romance complexes that have suffered greatly in the amateur house collapse crisis include but are not limited to "Heartbeat Signal", "Heartbeat 20 Years Old", and "Heartbeat Again". This is a problem that almost all slightly influential romances will face, especially the more the creator subdivides the crowd and concept, the greater the chance of "stepping on the thunder".
The gradually improving breach of contract agreement and compensation clause have made the collapse crisis no longer frequent, but the amateur stories in the romance have also begun to stage new bridges. "Be in love, be representative, and have a cute personality. Romance does not need to be perfect, but dare to be your true self. Producer Yan Zhihua once revealed when talking about the selection criteria of "Half-Acquainted Lovers", but the development of romance so far, even the most basic "love appeal" has become a luxury.
After all, it is more difficult for us to believe that those sea king scumbags with a single mother-fetus character, female guests who know three things, and even male guests with doubtful sexual orientation really come to find love in romance.
In contrast, the vigorous army of Internet celebrities and strong commercial value in the "affiliated industry chain" of the love complex seem to be more convincing. After all, relying on the stable market fundamentals of Lianjian, the operational capabilities of the platform and the natural stickiness of CP culture, Lianjian has indeed allowed many amateurs to embark on the "flower road" and make a lot of money.
According to media reports, the combined quotation of "Formula" and "Happy Planet" and other romantic CPs is basically 300,000-500,000; Last year, a brand of Xiaohongshu said that the quotation of "Bala La Energy" combined business has exceeded 7 figures. At the same time, according to the statistics of Four Elephants Studio, in the 8 months after the program was broadcast, Lola and Wang Neng could contact 31 and 8 businesses respectively, and there were also 8 joint businesses.
The attraction of the ancillary value brought by love exceeds that of love, and it also makes the concept of amateurs quietly change. Many people attribute one of the reasons why "Half-Acquainted Lovers 2" is not good to CP locked up prematurely and lacks excitement. But for amateurs, this is an efficient and safe card: compared with the public opinion crisis or even "social death" that may be triggered by emotional pulling, the CP image of "1+1>2" is obviously more likely to arouse the audience's good feelings.
There are more and more guests who successfully hold hands in the romance, but there are fewer and fewer CPs that make the audience's heart. "It was locked up so quickly, so why do you still come to the show, is there really no such opposite sex in life?" , "obviously they are well versed in the way of traffic, afraid that they will be left alone, grab one and not let go", there is no lack of such voices on the Internet.
The rapid offline breakup also seems to confirm the speculation of netizens. Of course, the romance accepts BE aesthetics, and even "the end of the romance is BE", but it definitely does not refer to those CPs who are sweet and sweet online, break up quickly offline or even become tearing * wars. That summer, who had not been ecstatic for "Providence CP", but then the tearing * battle and various recordings hanging on the hot search also shocked a bunch of people's eyes.
If the collapse crisis of individual amateurs is still flawed, then when some "impure" people mix into the love complex and blur the core value of the love complex, those who are afraid of sugar can only leave angrily. After all, who wants to be fed a mouthful of clumsy "industrial fake sugar" in the romance, is it not fragrant?
Innovation has become a "gimmick", and it is difficult for the romance to truly get out of homogenization
Romance is constantly being played with new tricks by creators. Although it is still the only emotional observation romance, multiple gameplay such as travel, drama interaction, reasoning, newlyweds, trains, friends and other scene relationships are also being explored. Why do audiences still feel that there are fewer and fewer romantic complexes that look good?
The answer is that there is no lack of concepts, models, and group innovations in the market, but only a few who really penetrate these concepts and are highly integrated with amateur guests, more of which are reduced to gimmicks, and also make it difficult for romance to truly get out of the homogenization dilemma.
The reason why "Half-Acquainted Lovers" is moving is that it truly captures the emotional status and demands of the current 30+ groups, and deeply explores this topic through amateur guests. But by the second season, the age of the guests is expanding, the program mechanism is reforming, and the purpose of guiding the audience to knock CP is too naked, all of which blur the uniqueness of "half-cooked":
For example, Zhang Baoer copied Lola's popular character, but it was not recognized by netizens; I hope to satisfy the public's pleasure of smashing sugar with CP binding, but I forget that CP fans love the most is the unique beauty of the hazy period of love. In the show's Douban high praise comments, many netizens mentioned "like "Heartbeat Signal". Creators are so eager to copy successful models and eager to do something new, and in the end they don't like both.
In addition to the difficult implementation of concepts and models, the relatively solidified "selection criteria" are also one of the "culprits" of innovation towards ambiguity. The selection here not only refers to amateur guests, but also includes star guests, emotional experts, etc.
For example, the amateur selection standard of "high appearance, high income, and high education" is still inescapable, which may indeed be a high-quality "love meal replacement" at the beginning, but in the long run, aesthetic fatigue is inevitable. However, it is worth affirming that the romance complex is also constantly enriching the guest database, and workers in the system, employees in large factories, and freelancers have gradually appeared in the show.
On the other hand, the flowing water romance, the iron-clad star guest and the emotional expert. Romance star guests are constantly arranged and combined between Wu Xin, Wang Ziwen, Du Haitao, Zhang Yuqi, etc., and Jin can personally "demonstrate" the love template, and the golden sentences of retreat can sit in the observation room. It's just that whether they can have poetry books in their belly, effective output, or simple sober characters, golden sentence effects, and afterwords.
At the same time, the emotional topics of star guests will "eat" a lot of the discussion of the emotional problems of the subdivided population itself. Relying on celebrities' emotional voyeurism, a short-term way to obtain traffic, is also stifling innovation. After all, most creators will choose a path that is easy to follow and looks flower-splending.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to define what the public loves to see, but it is certain that innovation is the only future. And we also hope to leave more space for innovation, and we also expect creators to be more persistent and drill into it, so that innovation can truly penetrate into the soil of romance.
The crisis has intensified and the buff is full, and 2023 can expect a romance explosion?
The basic stability of the market, the guest lineup combining stars and elements, and the relatively fixed recording scenes all determine that the complex is still a firm choice for the platform to reduce costs and increase efficiency, and "expand with small and broad". At present, the layout of major video platforms has also been improved, each with its own style and differentiated competition.
Tencent Video has built a romantic group of 20+, 30+ and other different age groups with "Heartbeat Signal" and "Half-Acquainted Lovers", and has also completed two market trends; Mango TV has created a large closed loop of emotional variety shows with different stages of marriage and love as the entry point, attracting a large number of loyal users; Youku aimed at the love of limited groups such as mother-fetus singles, and broke the game with "small but beautiful"; iQIYI's layout is not much better than the IP effect.
This is a summary of the development of the first five years of the romance. Five years is a journey, 2023 is a new beginning, although Q1 lacks a bit of surprise, but the next is also a melee of comprehensive N generation and new variety shows. New concept variety shows are still the focus of the platform's layout, while "Good Friendship and Love" refreshes the scale of domestic love complexes, "Love Express with Friends" and "Advanced Road of Love" also have high market expectations.
The romance complex, which has always been complained that there is no "after-sales service", has also opened up the "incremental space" of the romance complex with a small spin-off program. "The Little Thing of Love" and "Her Heartbeat Weekend" have been launched successively, and the team building of the love CP and the "return" of the love complex guests have undoubtedly poked the lung tube of many people. Of course, Mango TV's "Distance from Love to Marriage", as the after-sales customization of "Wife's Romantic Trip", is a rather novel gameplay.
New concept variety shows, derivative sales, the platform's enthusiasm for romance has never faded, but in the end, everything still has to return to the content: when amateur Internet celebrity shortcuts, advertisers are strong, and film variety diversion is irreversible, the public's emotional threshold and sugar threshold are getting higher and higher, how can romance maintain its watchability? This is clearly a question that the new node marketplace poses to creators.
This "battle royale game" about human emotions, only if the creators insist on exchanging sincerity for sincerity, can they once again become the audience's favorite. And in 2023, in all kinds of romantic adventures with friends, romantic adventures in Xinjiang snowfields, or the love version of "Truman's World", we are also looking forward to a new hit.