After walking through the four seasons of "Riding the Wind and Waves", where will it sail in the future?

"Cai Shaofen cried because the dance was too difficult" "Qiu Ceraixuan said that I will be good to you for the rest of my life", since the launch of "Riding the Wind 2023" in May, this group of 30+ sisters has become the topic of social scene again.

It has become a habit to meet with my sister every year. The audience may be moved by the different appearance of her sister on the stage, or moved by her sister's mutual help in the practice room, and Cold Eye is also one of the "sister" followers.

From a B-grade variety show with some experimental nature to a female group portrait variety show IP, because we have witnessed the growth of this show itself and seen its activation and promotion of the female variety show category, we will be particularly concerned about its iterative changes and word-of-mouth ups and downs.

As a long-term observer of the variety show industry, I have seen too many examples of unexpected popularity in the first season, the hasty launch of the second season, and the hasty end of the third season. I was also worried that "Riding the Wind and Waves" would embark on the road of "one blow and then three exhaustions", but with the broadcast of "Riding the Wind 2023", the overall recovery of IP reputation has dispelled the worries of cold eyes to some extent.

The market can't do without a sister, because it really hits the social mood and reflects the dilemma of women, and the audience has always had strong expectations for this IP. How to be a good sister has always been an eternal topic for the program group.

After four seasons of iteration, "Riding the Wind and Waves" has entered a mature period. Perhaps it's time to look back at this IP: we are not only concerned about how it grew into what it is today, what detours it has taken in the process of growth, but also hope to get a glimpse of the future direction of this giant ship of female group portraits through the analysis and inventory of the four seasons "Riding the Wind and Waves".

"Riding the Wind and Waves" rises and falls, and female group portraits gain and loss

It is fitting to use "breaking the dark horse" to describe the first season of "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves". At that time, the talent shows in the market were mainly amateur trainees, and no one would have thought that such a show with 30+ sisters as the main body could become a hit.

The success of "Sister Lang 1" is related to its choice of differentiated tracks.

Audiences need freshness. Audiences who have been bombarded by the show for more than two years and are tired of watching well-behaved amateurs seeking debuts are easily attracted by this group of 30+, experienced and certain industry status sisters. Some people call the behavior of the sister's "return" program group "cool text", which is essentially the freshness brought by the differentiation of the track.

In fact, looking back at the first season, it is not difficult to find that because there is no precedent to follow, the stage of "Sister Lang 1" is a bit rough. And the older sister, who is 30+ and has little experience in singing and dancing, is also difficult to compete with the amateur trainees who have been immersed in the practice room in terms of stage performance. The reason why "Sister Lang 1" can be a hit is because it cuts to social emotions, resonates with the audience, and arouses the enthusiasm of the public in the social field.

What was the social environment like? The "2019 Workplace Women's Employment and Settlement Report" pointed out that women's income and age are not directly proportional, and the actual and expected salary of women aged 36-40 is lower than that of women aged 31-35, and 35 years old is a watershed in the income of many women. The age limit of the public examination editor and the invisible red line of Internet companies are further exacerbating women's fear of the age figure of 35 or even 30+.

In variety shows at that time, especially in the show, trainees over the age of 25 laughed at themselves for being too old, and the contestants who had already debuted were ridiculed back to the pot meat, which invisibly aggravated the audience, especially female audiences, fear of age and future career planning.

The appearance of "Sister Lang 1" alleviated this panic to a certain extent. The sister it chooses is not a universal success: some have briefly tasted fame, others have never tasted what it means to become popular, and the vast majority of them are in a state of uncertainty at a crossroads. This makes the audience see themselves from their sister.

So the stories told in the show that "it's never too late to start" and "30+ is just a number" were able to move the audience. When the audience's emotions are touched, it is reasonable for the show to become popular.

To be honest, compared with the opening of the first season, the performance of "Sister Lang 2" and "Sister Lang 3" is not satisfactory. Although the number of broadcasts is still eye-catching, the public's reputation has declined a lot.

In the cold eye, the problem of these two seasons is that "if you want to be fast, you can't reach it".

It is not difficult to become popular, but the difficult thing is how to continue this fire. Many popular shows show "three more declines and exhaustion" because they have fallen into the trap of wanting to change but not knowing how to change.

The success of "Sister Lang" is because it tells the story of 30+ sisters. In "Sister Lang 2" and "Sister Lang 3", the proportion of stories has increased, and the reality show part has even overwhelmed the stage performance, and the story has become more, and the audience not only does not pay, but points out that "the sense of script is too heavy", "don't speculate CP" and "reality show is too fake" and other problems.

The imbalance between reality TV and stage is related to the "interference" of other shows at that time.

Also broadcast in 2020, "Youth Has You 2" outperformed its old rivals in the "Goose Peach Battle" with a large proportion of reality show parts, and even many viewers left messages asking the program team to release more reality shows as derivative programs. And this kind of reality show practice is also affecting several later shows.

Why did the reality show that worked on younger siblings fail when it came to my sister?

This has to do with the group portrayed by the show.

Siblings are completely alien to viewers, who need reality shows to label themselves and tell viewers, "Who am I" and "What do I have to like." But my sister already has a certain popularity among the audience, and labeling it will have the opposite effect, and even make the audience feel divided, and then draw the inference that "the script is too heavy".

Another point that led to the decline in word of mouth in the second and third seasons was that the program group downplayed the "competition" and focused on the happiness of the sisters.

This point is related to the program team's misjudgment of audience feedback. In the second half of the first season, some viewers did ask: Why does the 30+ sister sing and dance desperately, what is the difference between that and a trainee in her early 20s? So in the last two seasons of the show, the elimination mechanism was weakened, and the sisters enjoyed the stage more than "I want to win".

But this approach is obviously contrary to the actual thinking of the audience. As mentioned earlier, the audience looks at their sisters because they see themselves in them. Women are disciplined in reality to "don't fight", "don't be strong" and "don't be so ambitious", so the audience hopes to see the efforts made by women "to win" and even show aggression and ambition through the sister in the show. Downplaying the competition is equivalent to depriving the audience of their viewing coolness.

The word-of-mouth recovery of the new season of "Sister Lang" benefits from the "return to the original intention". The so-called original intention is actually a response to the needs of the audience.

One is to no longer deprive the audience of their viewing pleasure. This season's format returns to the cruelty of the first season, and the audience can see the sisters' efforts to win under high pressure.

The second is the compression of the proportion of reality shows. As mentioned earlier, reality shows are embellishments rather than main dishes for mature artists such as sisters. The audience wants to see the stage performance of the sisters after training hard, rather than the conflicts and chickens in the practice room that are recorded in detail.

Third, it is no longer "working against the public's aesthetics", specifically the return of Zhao Zhao. "Sister Lang 2" and "Sister Lang 3" have no shortage of strong players, but they have not been able to leave a large number of stages that have been revisited by people to this day like "Sister Lang 1". This is because in the second and third seasons of the show, the selection and adaptation of songs focus on musicality and cutting-edge, but ignore things that are too cutting-edge, which is often contrary to public taste. Those so-called "netherworld" stages are not bad, but the vast majority of the audience is still unacceptable.

As Leng Yin repeatedly emphasized, as long as the program meets the real needs of the audience, it will be reflected in word of mouth and broadcast. This season's "Sister Lang" is the best proof.

The four seasons of "Riding the Wind and Waves", how to continue in the future

The rules of the competition, the selection and adaptation of songs, and the stage presentation are the skin of the program; And "people" are the "bone phases" that support and determine how far the show can go.

If you choose the right person, the story will be wonderful. After the trial and error and adjustment of the previous seasons, from the casting logic of this season of "Sister Lang", the logic of "who to talk about" and "how to talk" has gone smoothly. If Mango TV can continue to consolidate these two things in the future, the IP of "Riding the Wind and Waves" will go further.

Let's start with "how to tell". If the first three seasons were the story of a group, the focus of this season returns to communication.

Since the first season, Leng Yan has always felt that "Sister" focuses on "forming a group", which is a little difficult to justify. My sisters are mature artists, and their debut means little to them. For them, going on this show is more like "making up for unfinished regrets" than "I want to debut in a group".

In the first three seasons of the show, through follow-up combined activities or sister + travel variety shows, I tried to make "forming a group" more reasonable. However, this kind of follow-up activity is not strongly related to whether the "group" is or not, and it still fails to say why Sister Tong wants to form a group.

This season is finally no longer entangled in forming a group, and the focus has changed from "to stay and form a group" to "stay one more issue to have one more good stage". And a good stage is not something that can be completed by one person alone, it needs to be communicated and collided with other sisters, learn from each other, sweat and tears together, and can be hatched.

In other words, the purpose of my sister changed from "forming a group" to "communicating", and "Sister" changed from "forming a group" to "communication platform".

When the focus of the show changed from "forming a group" to "communication", my sister's casting idea, that is, "who to talk about", also completely opened.

On the one hand, there is internationalization. The addition of sisters from different countries, the collision of different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, the conflict brought about by this uncertainty is a highlight in itself, in addition, the show itself has become a platform, which is also a popularity bonus for international sisters.

For example, Jung so-yeon from last season and Zhifu from this season. Jung so-yeon was born in the girls' age of the second-generation Korean group, and quit the group for some reason in 2014, and she returned to the United States to develop a mediocre response and lack of fans. On the contrary, coming to China to record "Sister" not only recalled many old fans who had taken off their meals, but also sucked a batch of new fans for her. Nowadays, Zheng Xiuyan has many variety show recording invitations in the mainland, and is also a frequent visitor to various music festivals.

Chifu is a "black and red" star in Vietnam. Coming to China to participate in "Sister" is first, to open up a larger market, as a multi-habitat artist, she will not only have stage and variety show invitations in China in the future, but also have the opportunity to participate in drama shooting; The second is to reverse the reputation in Vietnam by virtue of the excellent performance in the international market. It is not difficult to find from the comments of Zhifu's Instagram account that because of the recording of "Sister", her wind reviews in Vietnam have a trend of turning over.

On the other hand, there are small circles. It is not difficult to find that the selection of my sister is no longer limited to singers, actors and MCs in the traditional sense, and two-dimensional singers, dancers and athletes are also included in the casting category. While selecting people from small circles brings freshness to the audience, the vitality of small circles will continue to develop due to public attention.

Needless to say, this season's Meiyi Liya has single-handedly activated the public's exploration and discussion of the second dimension, and has also revived "house dance" to some extent; Tang Shiyi and Zhu Jiejing in the last season, and Xie Xin this season are both dancers, and their performance on stage has also stimulated the public's interest in "dance" and the attention of different dance types.

Rich casting group portraits attract viewers to pay attention to the show to see their sister; And the audience supported her sister and took the initiative to speak out for the IP because she was moved by her sister's story: because "she deserves", she supports attention. From the first season to the present, the ups and downs of IP reputation are not difficult to find, how to make the audience feel that "she is worthy" is not easy.

What does "she deserve"?

Zhang Yuqi in the first season is typical. Zhang Yuqi on the first stage, dancing smoothly and singing mediocre, made the audience inevitably question her strength. And with the broadcast of the show, in the performance after performance, the audience saw her enthusiasm and seriousness for the stage, her righteous care for other sisters, and her open-mindedness and blunt sense in the face of failure, these flashpoints made the audience feel that she was worthy of being liked, and Zhang Yuqi also became one of the sisters with the highest favorability in the first season.

In the second and third seasons, the proportion of reality shows was increased, trying to impress the audience by portraying and excavating the relationship between sisters, but was questioned by the audience that "the sense of script is too heavy", which was counterproductive.

For example, Yu Wenwen in the third season caused great controversy due to the speech of "I am not a woman" and the attitude of wandering from the collective, and the follow-up reality show part recorded in more detail the changes in Yu Wenwen's way of dealing with other sisters and attitudes. However, a large number of viewers believe that this is a "reality show whitewash", and Yu Wenwen, who has always been low-key, has even become a "bloody and bloody" physique, which is still controversial.

And this season's focus on competition, focusing on the stage, on the contrary, it is easier to play the point of "she is worthy", Xu Huaiyu's reputation recovery is a typical case.

In the first performance, Xu Huaiyu was reprimanded by the audience for "rotten" due to poor stage performance and even mistakes in positioning, forgetting movements, etc. If you follow the ideas of previous seasons, the show will tell the audience why Xu Huaiyu has become so bad and how her past experience has affected her now through dormitory and practice room chat.

Telling the audience "why" directly through the program will always make the audience feel that this is an act of whitewashing the head. This season's focus is on the stage, and the audience sees Xu Huaiyu's every change on stage, her eyes change from loose and unconfident to firm, and they will be curious about what happened before to make her state worse. Finding out the cause and effect by searching for yourself is much more persuasive than the program group's direct "feeding".

In other words, the audience wants "she is worthy" that they have dug up, not "she is worthy" directly told by the program team.

Of course, judging from the public comments, the reputation of this season is better than that of the second and third seasons, but there is still a gap with the first season. One is the "first love effect", and the other is that there is still room for improvement and adjustment in the iterative update of the program: for example, the performance grouping logic and the selection mechanism of music selection can be further optimized; Some contradictions with insufficient highlights, such as song selection and substitution, can be directly removed.

As a pioneer of all-female variety shows, "Riding the Wind and Waves" provides mature actresses with the opportunity to be noticed by the outside world again, and also alleviates social emotions to some extent. As mentioned earlier, how to be a good sister is an eternal topic for the program team. In the future, if "Riding the Wind" wants to continue to maintain the leading position of all-female variety shows and make qualitative breakthroughs, it may also need to further enhance emotional coolness and increase the highlights of the show.

For example, the idea of casting can be further opened, and the combination of international + small circle + leading figures may be able to achieve dimensionality reduction strikes, improve the watchability of the program, and let the sisters burst out more sparks with each other; There can also be a special season of gameplay, recalling the top sisters in previous seasons of the show to group melee to see who is the strongest sister. Viewers often compare which season's music director has the strongest ability to adapt, so you might as well go further, the sisters of seasons 1 and 4 are led by Zhao Zhao to face Liu Zhuo in the second season and Arai Eleven in the third season, meeting the needs of the audience while also increasing the excitement of the show.

In short, I look forward to the "Riding the Wind" series to make Leng Eye shine again, and I hope that more widow sisters at home and abroad will shine again through the stage of "Riding the Wind".