Author / Golden Horn King
Operations/Cookies
The first public stage of "Riding the Wind 2024", which has gathered 36 sisters, will be staged this week, and it is already possible to imagine the hot search battle on Friday.
But on the whole, the "Sister Lang" series has gone through several years, with new wine in old bottles, and there are almost no major changes in the program model, and the talent show category is affected and withdrawn from the variety show market, and the momentum is inevitably much worse than before.
The spring of 2024 has come to an end, and in the past first quarter, the variety show market is still as flat as water, there are no big surprises, no new popular hits, content innovation is in a predicament, and the overall performance is calm and bland.
According to the industry report data, a total of 43 new quarterly variety shows (including 7 derivatives, excluding evening parties) will be launched in the first quarter of 2024, a decrease of 5 from the same period last year. Among them, there are 24 levels of network comprehensive, a decrease of 8 files from last year. 19 new variety shows were launched, an increase of 3 over the same period last year, accounting for 44%, and 24 new variety shows were launched, a decrease of 7 over last year.
The supply of variety shows on the four major platforms of Aiyou Tengmang is between 12-16, of which Mango TV leads with 16 files, followed by Youku with 15 seats, Tencent Video 12 files, iQiyi 8 files, Station B 3 files, and Douyin 1 file.
On the whole, the variety show market has not been able to sweep away the downturn in recent years in the spring of 2024, the development of new categories has slowed down significantly, and the market relies on the support of the N generation of variety.
In 2024, the sluggish variety show market still seems to have failed to usher in a new spring.
First, the promotion of new is not powerful
According to Yunhe data statistics, in 2024, in the Q1 effective broadcast ranking of online comprehensive feature films, mango programs occupy the top three seats, namely "The Ninth Season of the Great Detective", "Flowers and Youth: Silk Road Season" and "The Sound of Life: Family Years", followed by iQiyi's "Let's Farm the Second Season" and "Let's Farm the First Season". Among the top 10, only "Happy Friends" is a new and innovative show.
Strictly speaking, more viewers will regard "Happy Friends" as a spin-off of "Happy Again". But it is undeniable that it is indeed a new variety show with better performance in the Q1 market.
The dilemma of content innovation has brought more severe challenges to the domestic variety show industry. On the one hand, the overall investment in the market is not optimistic, and the investment in upstream projects and new projects has not released an optimistic attitude compared with last year.
Take two of the more representative programs among the innovative programs in the first quarter of this year as examples.
"The Cat in the Box" combines the breakthrough mode with dramatic elements, and the setting is a parallel world based on the theme of the current social hotspots in the name of "box", and the guests will get a new identity after opening the box, and become a "cat" with nine lives, and then enter it to break through.
Relying on the strong star appeal of chief producer Huang Lei, Chen He, Zheng Kai, Wang Xun, Lin Gengxin, Huang Xiaoming, Yin Zheng, Zhang Yixing, Wang Junkai ...... The guest lineup is as strong as "Run" and "Extreme Challenge" back then.
But the whole show has an old and new atmosphere inside and out. The concept setting is very new, but the gameplay and temperament are the ones that have been seen countless times. Acquaintances have natural topics and advantages in getting along, but they also have to face the challenge of acquaintances playing new tricks.
Similar to Youku's "Cat in a Box" is also "We" jointly launched by Hunan Satellite TV and Mango TV. The program is positioned as a relaxed three-person group travel category, similar to Tencent's 2021 original friendship reality show "Just a Teenager". Even the choice of guests has a certain internal logical similarity.
The project "We" has attracted a lot of attention with its interesting guest lineup before the show was officially launched and broadcast. Wei Daxun and Guo Qilin are not easy to match Mao. The public has a good impression of the market of these three - some can speak, some can think, and some have excellent audiences, and these people can be properly matched in other programs, so they can present a famous scene with universal topics and literary discussions, high emotional intelligence, and a sense of variety shows.
Of course, the program team also knew, so they invited Li Xueqin, Yang Di and others as flying guests.
So what about the end result?
The whole program emphasizes the participation of AI - the program is produced by Aimang, an AI director developed by Hunan Radio and Television. However, in terms of mode, the scattered itinerary, random topic planning, and AI implantation are inappropriate...... In the end, some boring star vlogs of pure boring life flow were made, wasting guests and wasting the concept of the show.
The core essence of the gap between content and concept is the laziness of creators.
The path dependence of domestic variety show creators is particularly significant in the dependence on guests. Even the recognized mango system in the field of variety shows will inevitably show laziness.
Let's go back and look back from the comparison of "Happy Friends" and "Happy Again", a very significant feature is that the variety show content has been fighting round after round, and the audience's expectations may have entered the era of de-multiplicity - the theme must be clear and straightforward, and the core of the content should be seen more directly, redundant gimmicks and stacking in the form of elements, under the impact of short videos, they have become a factor in driving away customers in feature films.
Second, the comprehensive N generation supports the market
When the pace of opening new platforms slows down and new categories cannot support market expectations, they can only bet on the comprehensive N generation that has been verified by the market. It is not difficult to understand why the N generation of variety shows has become the leader of variety shows on major platforms in the past two years.
From the observation point of view, from the end of last year to the present, the programs that have made a splash are basically the N generation of comprehensive.
Including, "Flowers and Youth: Silk Road Season", which was praised as the ceiling of travel programs, and last year's phenomenal "Let's Farm the Land", the second season of this year took over the popularity of the first season. According to industry report data, the popularity of "Let's Farm Season 2" has increased compared with the first season. There are also "Detective 9", "Riding the Wind 2024", and the second season of Youku's "Infinite Transcendence Class", which follows the model of TVB acting training, and spends effort on helping young actors polish their acting skills, and the topic is hot, and the overall word-of-mouth popularity has shown a steady rise.
In contrast, the second season of "Dad's Home", which set off a frenzy of cute babies last summer, failed to continue the popularity of the previous season.
In terms of business performance, the upstream also significantly focuses on the comprehensive N generation. Yien data shows that iQiyi's "Let's Farm 2", which was launched on February 23, and "Let's Farm 2", which was launched on February 23, attracted a total of 9 manufacturers, 10 brands, and 26 soft and wide genres, ranking first in Q1 variety shows. "This! is the sixth season of hip-hop" has attracted a total of 8 manufacturers and 36 soft and wide genres, ranking second among Q1 variety shows. The ninth season of "The Great Detective" also won the cooperation of 4 manufacturers and 5 brands.
Among them, it is worth noting the exploration and success of "The Great Detective", the head IP of detectives, in the commercialization of TOC. In November 2019, the fifth season of "Star Detective" introduced the virtual boy group NZND concert in the show, based on a similar concept, the sixth, seventh, eighth and most recently ninth seasons all released paid (and later converted to membership content) "concerts" before the official launch of the show.
As a variety show with a basically stable guest lineup and a sense of family raised by 9 seasons of programs, the exploration of the IP of "Star Detective" on the C-end payment does have certain reference significance.
Speaking of the topic, Yunhe data shows that the overall traffic of variety shows in Q1 will continue to decline in 2024, with a total of 5.7 billion effective playbacks of feature films, a year-on-year decrease of 5%. There is no doubt that the entire variety show industry is still facing the dilemma of an overall decline in traffic. But that doesn't mean it's a worthless track.
Wang Zhengyu, director of "5 Ha", once mentioned in an interview: "The role of variety shows was originally to provide the audience with emotional value for decompression and relaxation, but now short videos are being provided in batches, so the advantage of variety shows is to provide evocative and meaningful emotional value." ”
In fact, taking the two variety N generations that are deeply liked by the audience this season as an example - "Flowers and Youth: Silk Road Season" and the second season of "Let's Farm the Land", it is a good feedback on the value of the emotional value of variety shows.
One of these two shows is a celebrity guest, and the other is biased towards amateur "cultivation".
The former has its own topic and popularity, but "Flowers and Youth: Silk Road Season" has well restrained the gossip and human feelings entangled routine that once made this IP stand on the top of travel programs, and stabilized the spark of guests who enjoy meals all the time. The show focuses more on the portrayal of harmony and warmth, the atmosphere of the whole season is simple and warm, and the travel itinerary is clear and tight, which fiercely grasps the hearts of the audience who go to school and work in a daily passivity.
The second season of the latter's "Let's Farm the Land" firmly remembered the key to being able to stand out in the first season - real and hard work. In the first season, this group of young people, who seemed to have never suffered much, turned into farmer uncles from the whole process of land reclamation, sowing, irrigation, fertilization, and harvesting.
The second season also retains this rustic presentation form close to life itself, which plays a key role in the continuation of the popularity of this season. The audience likes to watch it because of the pastoral dream and the awakening of farming genes in the social mood in the past two years. This group of people has no star halo, no "fraud" entertainment of returning to the hotel to rest after a few hasty hoes, and the down-to-earth atmosphere of "Let's Farm the Land" brings a sense of cordial substitution to cyber farming.
In the second season, the program team brought a larger area of farming land to 10 young people, and the agricultural territory has been greatly expanded, but also created an atmosphere of cultivation that believes in the power of the land.
But at the end of the day, domestic variety shows have experienced high-speed involution in previous years, highly dependent on routines and patterned shells, just like the retouched pictures of those star studios, boring and soulless. Now that the season of flowers has passed, the delicate shell is no longer enough to attract attention, and the moment of sinking, who is more sincere, who can win the market.