The slow variety show turned to the acquaintance track, and the platform still had a turnaround

 Wang Ruoye

Some people say that "Where Did Daddy Go" is the prototype of the variety show genre of domestic slow variety shows; Some people also say that "Longing for Life" has made slow variety shows break ground in the domestic market; Some people also say that "Mao Xuewang" has found a new way to tell the story of domestic slow variety shows.

In any case, the above shows have successively proved that the emergence of slow variety shows has injected a clear stream into the variety show market, each with its own merits. Through the slow pace different from fast variety shows, slow variety shows provide spiritual comfort and habitat space for the audience, and gradually replace the market position of many fast variety shows.

However, since the development of slow variety shows, life social IPs, including "Longing for Life" and "Flowers and Youth", have also begun to be accused of becoming embarrassing and boring. The golden age of traditional slow variety shows seems to be coming to an end. On the contrary, the "acquaintance variety show" represented by "Mao Xuewang" has become a popular track for various platforms to compete to settle in.

At the beginning of the third quarter of 2023, many variety shows in the "star + star friend" mode such as "It's a Good Friend's Weekend", "Happy Adult" and "Friends Please Eat" were launched. Under the crowded track, more and more slow variety shows are accelerating and running, wanting to stand out with new guests, new content, and new forms.

After these acquaintance variety shows that combine old and new and integrate fast and slow have entered a new stage, the production rules of slow variety shows in the past have also quietly changed.

Quickly layout acquaintances variety shows

In the first issue of the seventh season of "Longing for Life", Huang Lei suddenly announced that "Longing for Life", which has accompanied everyone for seven years, will stop and say goodbye to the audience. He Jiong echoed that variety shows are fruitless.

Compared with many variety shows that were forced to leave class, the farewell of "Longing for Life" is particularly decent. The audience did not have too much reluctance and surprise, but more were as relieved as Huang Lei and He Jiong. Because "Longing for Life", born in 2017, has changed from the original "a small courtyard, three good meals, four or five best friends", utopian experience life has become a farmhouse where stars work for work.

In the first two seasons of "Longing for Life", which the audience especially loves to watch, most of the guests invited are long-time friends of Huang Lei and He Jiong, and Song Dandan, Xie Na, Wang Zhonglei and others have visited, and acquaintances are warm and comfortable whether they are working or chatting. The show has no plot conflicts and no character settings, some are just idyllic scenery and rural life. The audience had a good time, and the guests also had a good time.

But in recent seasons of "Longing for Life", Huang Lei and He Jiong's respective friends have long been consumed, and most of the guests who can be invited are "young people" who may not be familiar to the audience. The family became guests, and everyone repeated the process of cooking, eating, working, playing and sleeping, interspersed with some memories of Huang Lei and He Jiong's past, forcibly exporting a large wave of life philosophy. A few people who were not familiar with each other forced themselves to show the familiar side of the show, and the result was not only embarrassing, but also embarrassing.

"Longing for Life", which escaped the atmosphere of acquaintances, also suffered a cliff decline, and netizens complained endlessly. "I just remember Huang Lei looking at a few young people every day and exclaiming, 'It's so good, it's good for children to do this.'" Then make a table of rice for the new star, the star eats a bite and sticks out his thumb to croak, and a group of people talk around the table until they cry. ”

Once created a precedent for domestic slow variety shows, it is difficult to return to the original appearance. On the contrary, short and medium-sized variety shows such as "Mao Xuewang" and "Happy Departure" such as "Mao Xuewang" and "Happy Departure" were unexpectedly "exploded" and "exploded".

"Mao Xuewang" initially gave the audience the impression of "cooked". Mao Buyi and Li Xueqin are acquaintances, the guests are all acquaintances of Mao Buyi and Li Xueqin, and the content of the program is also one acquaintance chat after another. Friends come to the house to visit, chat, cook, play games, the process is actually no different from "Longing for Life".

The difference is that the chat style of "Mao Xuewang" is more pleasing among young people today, "Mao Mao loves to drink, Xueqin loves to be lazy, and neither of them can cook, so they always order takeaway." "They don't inadvertently export the values of the older generation.

In addition, the personalities of Mao Buyi and Li Xueqin also determine that the guests of "Mao Xuewang" are all familiar with each other. Even if it is necessary to invite some celebrity guests who do not know each other, Mao Buyi and Li Xueqin have also said that these new friends must be people they themselves are interested in and want to become familiar. Although this may lead to the duplication of the guest lineup of "Mao Xuewang", there can also be fresh topics to talk about between acquaintances.

The success of "Mao Xuewang" has made the variety show market see that slow variety shows with native friend relationships as the starting point have their own unique charm, and "Is a Good Friend's Weekend" and "Happy Adult" are slow variety shows presented by Youku and Mango TV respectively focusing on the social interaction of acquaintances after "Mao Xuewang".

The former takes the weekend life of friends as the theme, and invites Angelababy, Ouyang Nana, Zhang Da and other different friend circles to form a bureau to plan a short trip together under the premise of zero intervention in the whole process of the program group. The latter is dominated by Shen Yue, Wang Jingxuan, Wu Yuheng, and Zhou Yanchen's original circle of friends, and guests plan and produce their own variety shows.

The relationship between acquaintances has become synonymous with "good-looking, fun, and good to eat" due to slow variety shows. All platforms are working hard to find the circle of friends of Mao Buyi and Li Xueqin to create the next "Mao Xuewang".

Although "It's a Good Friend's Weekend" and "Happy Adult" were not able to match "Mao Xuewang" shortly after they were broadcast, "Mao Xuewang" has gradually been looked at differently since the second season. Importantly, the emergence of two new programs, "A Weekend of Good Friends" and "Happy Adult", indicates that the acquaintance variety show has become an indispensable step for the slow variety show track of the platform.

Quickly deconstruct emotional relationships

On the other hand, the process of acquaintance stars getting along is often more real, grounded, and more captivating to the audience.

In the face of slow variety shows based on the premise of reality shows, the audience's tastes are becoming more and more obvious, and refusing to fake, refuse to fake hypocrisy, and refuse to deliberately contradict is almost the consensus of the audience. The realism, immersion, and comfort of acquaintance variety shows in content are the decisive factors to constantly impress the audience.

In the early days of "Longing for Life", there were no big ideas and small philosophies, and some were just the daily lives of acquaintances and friends. Huang Lei and Song Dandan were poisoned by greedy eating old beans, knocking on the basin late at night and singing "Heart Fire"; Chen He named the Buddha to jump over the wall and break more than a thousand corns with Dahua; Da Zhang Wei and Dahua grilled burgers and barbecues on the earthen stove while setting up a DJ booth on the earthen stove to play DJs. Before the broadcast of "Longing for Life", the audience never imagined that stars also had such a real side.

Taking a number of variety shows that have been well received by the audience as an example, He Jiong and Wang Jiaer in the food show "Please the Refrigerator", Dong Zijian, Liu Haoran and Wang Junkai in the travel show "Just a Teenager", and Big S and Aya in "We Are Real Friends" are all acquaintance partners, so the variety show effect is doubled.

Because everyone is familiar with each other, they can soak naked together in the hot spring, put together the double bed of the hotel into a double bed, and review the small stories that happened when they were together in private, even if they occasionally fell silent together. When these slow variety shows were born, the concept of acquaintance variety shows had not yet been popularized. Everyone just feels that the variety show with real friends joining seems to produce more memes and jokes, and the guest performance is relatively harmonious and natural.

And although "Star Detective" has never belonged to the category of slow variety shows, after several seasons of the show, guests such as He Jiong, Sa Bening, Bai Jingting and other guests have become more and more familiar, jokes have become more and more bold, and the degree of funny of the show has skyrocketed. The emotional connection between the "Detective Family" evolved into part of the reason why audiences love Star Detective.

In addition, fast variety shows such as "Extreme Challenge", "Run" and "High-energy Youth Group" are also intentionally or unintentionally borrowing from the successful model of today's slow variety shows, emphasizing brotherhood and family love.

For example, the intricate brotherhood and character image settings in "Extreme Men Gang" are closely linked to the plot content in the show, creating a character relationship diagram exclusive to "Extreme Challenge". The continuous fermentation of relationships such as "Ming Detective Family", "Running Family" and "Extreme Man Gang" has strengthened the audience's sense of awareness and ratings stickiness of variety shows, and cultivated a group of stable variety show fans.

It can be seen that familiar interpersonal relationships can not only strengthen the audience's cognition of the guests' personal, but also increase the memory points and emotional lines of the show itself.

Mango TV's "Happy Adult" launched by "Wild Boar Family" should also be well versed in this, and "Wild Boar Family" already had a deep and loyal fan base before "Happy Adult" was broadcast.

This show was originally just Shen Yue, who was originally a professional in choreography, and posted a VLOG to record her life in her account, which was popular with netizens because of her interesting production style and the appearance of star friends. Several people who often appear in the VLOG named themselves "The Boar Family" in a joke. With the accumulation of the first phase of VLOG, "Wild Boar Family" gradually separated from Shen Yue's personal IP, and as a "program" IP, it has a large number of young audiences.

The first episode of "Happy Adult" is more like a 78-minute VLOG than a variety show. Shen Yue, Wang Jingxuan, Wu Yuheng and others get along like most ordinary young people, with tacit topics, common laughs, inexplicable tacit understanding and messy memes, every nonsense is said, and the people around them can also pick it up.

It is not difficult to find that the highlights of the acquaintance variety show are still reflected in "real". The revelation of the relationship between real acquaintances unexpectedly made the audience disgusted with some slow variety shows that originally featured "acquaintances", and "Longing for Life" was no longer simple by "Mao Xuewang" and "Happy Adult", which is really inevitable.

Today's slow variety show that the audience yearns for is actually on the basis of "true", and a spoonful of "cooked" condiments has been added.

Quickstep innovation production concept

"Happy Adult" was included by Mango TV, and at the same time revealed a new signal in the variety show market in slow variety show production - saving star costs + increasing platform revenue.

In the early days, variety shows opened up the layout of the whole industry chain from upstream to downstream, and satellite TV directly profited from advertising fees, traffic revenue and ratings. Around 2013, hot money poured into the variety show market in batches, and the strange phenomenon of using money to poach people repeatedly appeared, and the announcement fees of big coffee stars crowded out the cost of variety show production.

Later, the "separation of production and broadcasting" greatly changed the profit model of variety shows. Social companies are responsible for investment and production, platforms are responsible for investment and broadcasting, and they are responsible for their own profits and losses, and gambling on ratings to determine advertising shares. Although this model is obviously biased towards the platform side, it also ensures the basic quality of variety show content, and the market should be happy about it.

In recent years, the slogan of "reducing costs and increasing efficiency" proposed by various platforms has made the production cost of variety shows regulated again, and the industry is thinking about how to make the best quality programs with the least amount of money. Although Mango TV did not disclose the profit path of "Happy Adult", it can also glimpse a corner through the content of the program.

The cost to Shen Yue and others for the entire season of "Happy Adult" is 5,000 yuan, including all the costs of shooting, guest invitation, and post-production, but unlike other reality shows, they can use their own money to fill the "holes" in the variety show production process. This also shows that "Happy Adult" is more like a "Boar Family" and Mango TV, a "split-bill work" agreed upon according to the broadcast effect.

Coincidentally, 0713's turnaround variety show "Welcome to the Mushroom House" gave Su Xing, Wang Zhengliang, Wang Lixin and others a notification fee that was only better than nothing, but the platform income after the program became popular was much greater than its production cost.

For the platform, the situation that guests in the acquaintance variety show are "familiar" with "familiar" is a great tool for the platform to save costs. The profit model of stars independently producing variety shows, then putting variety shows on the platform, and finally sharing accounts between the platform and the stars is a new direction that the platform is actively exploring. In Europe, the United States, Japan and South Korea, this type of variety show has begun to take shape.

On the one hand, celebrities need variety shows to strengthen their exposure, on the other hand, platforms also need content to fill the site, and a large number of stars in YouTube are uploading self-made VLOGS and chat interview videos. Looking at the country, this form of variety show is not unforeseeable.

Slow variety shows based on life, socialization, and chat do not require strict game rules and production processes, and only three or two star friends can support a veritable acquaintance variety show. The content of the first issue of "It's a Good Friend's Weekend" is not a big production scene or an outdoor game, but Angelababy, Ouyang Nana and Jin Jing huddled in the back of the taxi and chatted "50 yuan bought a signed photo of Jiang Qiming".

The slow variety show has developed to the stage of acquaintance variety show, and the irreproducible chemical reaction between acquaintances and guests has also opened up new ideas for slow variety shows that have fallen into creative fatigue to some extent. The growth space of slow variety shows has also shifted from the content direction to the production direction, whether it is "Mao Xuewang" or "Happy Adult" and "It's a Good Friend's Weekend", the new slow variety show with a small and broad is moving forward quickly.

These benefits and changes on the platform are the development opportunities of slow variety shows, which are still in the future.