Wen | AI Finance and Economics Agency Zhang Kexin
Editor| Yang Jie
In the first week after the National Day holiday, the fourth season of "Talk Show Conference" is about to usher in the final battle, looking back at the two months of program content since the beginning of August 10, many viewers said that the general perception of this season is: not as good as the third season.
In July 2020, the third season of the revised "Talk Show Conference" turned out to be a show, and this laughing fruit culture planned to "give up recording" several times after experiencing successive storms such as the dispute over the termination of the contract and the arrest of Cam's drug use, but unexpectedly began with the opening show of Li Shi laughing bitterly at himself "(Laughing Fruit Culture) This company is still there", which has been popular all summer.
According to some data, as of September 21 last year, the third season of "Talk Show Conference" averaged more than 110 million views per session, and the Douban score was as high as 8.0, far exceeding the previous two seasons. On the night of the final, the third season of "Talk Show Conference" received 44 hot searches on the whole network, and as of the ninth issue, the total number of Weibo hot searches of the program reached 95, including Li Xueqin, Yang Kasa, Zhou Qimo, and other contestants, with a total of 64 weibo hot searches, with a total reading volume of more than 8 billion. In particular, Li Xueqin stood out from the crowd of contestants and gained a large number of fans, leaving a deep memory for countless audiences that summer.
Just when everyone thought that after experiencing the third season, the new and niche industry of talk shows was about to explode, the rating of the fourth season of "Talk Show Conference" on Douban had fallen to 7.4 points, and even less than the rating of 7.6 in the second season. Controversies about actor promotion, ratings, and mentors in the show have occurred from time to time, and many viewers have "abandoned the play" because of this. "This year's sense of surprise is obviously not as strong as last year, as can be seen from the number of Weibo hot searches, last year's third season was almost a period of Weibo hot search, and this year's obvious popularity is flat." Some viewers told AI Finance and Economics.
In this year's talk show conference, Li Xueqin's figure was missing. And until the end of the show, there was no rookie like Li Xueqin.
The laughing fruit culture that successfully created the four seasons of "Talk Show Conference" is still the absolute head company in the industry. However, limited by the current development of the industry, Li Shi also admitted that "the company's industry is dominant but still weak." And now that online talk show performances are declining due to talent, controversy and other factors, and the development of offline formats is uneven, can seemingly "lively" talk shows really go out of the circle as desired?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="108" > it is difficult to copy Li Xueqin</h1>
For Liu Xing, a veteran audience member of "Talk Show Conference", not being able to see Li Xueqin in the fourth season is his biggest regret.
In the third season of "Talk Show Conference", which set off waves in the variety industry in 2020, Li Xueqin is recognized as the biggest "surprise". As a newcomer who spoke about talk shows for the first time, Li Xueqin finally won the fifth place in the first season with a score of 125 votes, and the first four were all signed artists under Xiaoguo Culture.
In a total of 10 episodes of the program, Li Xueqin and its derivative topics contributed nearly half of the hot searches for the third season of "Talk Show Conference", from "Peking University Talented Girl", "The End of the Universe", to "Snow Country Train", Li Xueqin with her unique "funeral talk show" style, and "CP" bursting stem firmly grasped the hearts of the audience, and also pushed the program to a climax several times.
After the end of the show, Li Xueqin's speed and popularity of going out of the circle were also significantly higher than other contestants, and she successively won the permanent guest places such as the seventh season of the variety show "Happy Comedians", "Fifty Kilometers peach blossom wood" and the fourth season of "Heartbeat Signal", and participated in the recording of variety shows such as the second season of "Heartwarming Offer" and "Longing for Life", and also performed at the Lantern Party in 2021.
In terms of commercial value, Li Xueqin is almost the most successful "star-making" case since the establishment of "Talk Show Conference". At the same time, Li Xueqin's success is also of great significance to the culture of laughing fruit.
The third season of the show is tantamount to a "backwater battle" for the laughing fruit culture that has repeatedly encountered negative news at that time. Xiaoguo culture and Li Shi have always wanted to promote the talk show industry to the public, but what really makes talk shows out of the circle is two "net red anchors" Luo Yonghao and Li Xueqin. At the same time, when the old actors of the talk show have shown a lack of creative strength, the show can only rely on continuously attracting new people to stabilize the situation, and Li Xueqin's popularity has become the most realistic temptation for the actors.
But Li Xueqin and Luo Yonghao are "out of the circle" in the end, and they have not really transformed into traffic in the talk show industry. On August 10, 2021, the fourth season of "Talk Show Conference" began broadcasting, and Li Xueqin, who did not sign a contract with Laughing Fruit Culture, did not participate again.
In this season of the show, Xiaoguo Culture also revealed its intention to "recreate" a Li Xueqin. And in order to avoid the embarrassment of "making wedding dresses for others", Xiaoguo Culture selected its own actors.
In the second episode of the fourth season, as soon as Bird Bird Fu appeared in front of the audience, the labels of "newcomer + Peking University education" and "social fear + funeral" made many viewers obviously feel that she had Li Xueqin's shadow. Under the trend that academic passages have gradually become the content elements of talk shows, birds and birds have successively thrown out historical and professional terriers such as "Loulan Beauty" dry corpses and "body image disorders" to stabilize the "talented girl" persona.
(Photo/Talk Show Conference Official)
In the third period of the program, Li Shi even took the initiative to expose that "the manuscript of Xu Zhiyuan of the spit conference was written by birds and birds", and the term also quickly appeared on the hot search after the program was broadcast, triggering discussion among netizens. However, this also quickly triggered another kind of voice, and the discussion about "at that time, the screenwriting team assigned to Xu Zhiyuan by the "Spit Conference" program group had a total of five people, and Bird bird was only one of them" also arose. Finally, in the seventh episode of the show, Bird bird was unfortunately eliminated and stopped in the semi-finals.
Peking University talented women know much, but Li Xueqin only has one.
Now that the top seven of the show's fourth season have been released, except for Xu Zhisheng and the "carnivorous animal" group, who are new to the show for the first time, the other five are old faces familiar to many viewers. Some viewers said that the "carnivorous animals" represented Japan's "manga" form of performance, many people had limited acceptance, and Xu Zhisheng was confined to the comedic "appearance advantage" dividend for how long it was unknown.
Even if Li Has been shouting for many years that "everyone can be a 5-minute talk show actor", it still can't solve the current situation of the lack of newcomers in the talk show industry. Lacking a phenomenon-level "surprise" like "Li Xueqin", the fourth season of "Talk Show Conference" did not replicate the glory of last year.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="109" > the "offensive" boundary problem</h1>
The reason why Li Xueqin can become a phenomenon-level "surprise", in addition to the "high education" and the blessing of the "funeral talk show", there is still a factor behind it, that is, its content is "pleasing". Talk shows are dubbed "offensive art," but much of Li Xueqin's work revolves around her own life, her boss, and another stand-up comedian, Wang Jianguo.
In contrast, Yang Kasa, who is also loved by the audience but also controversial, has repeatedly stepped on the thunder because of "offense", and even began to affect his own commercial value.
On March 18, 2021, Intel's official Weibo released a promotional video in which Yang Kasa became a spokesperson, in which Yang Kasa said that "Intel's vision is too high, higher than the vision of the object I picked", which caused some netizens to be uncomfortable. Previously, in the third season, Yang Kasa had been controversial because some comments on men were quite sharp, and the classic sentence "He is obviously so ordinary but so confident" has angered many male netizens. Its Intel endorsement has triggered a lot of male boycott, some netizens bluntly said that "Yang Kasa is not qualified to serve as a spokesperson for computer products dominated by male users", and finally Intel removed Yang Kasa-related promotional materials.
And too controversial and distinct characters, it seems to make Yang Kasa's content creation road in the fourth season more and more narrow, Liu Xing told AI Finance and Economics, "Yang Kasa this year fried cold rice suspicion is getting heavier and heavier, want to offend but dare not offend between the play, and based on its own talk show audience is mainly female, like her seems to have become a sense of correct, but talk show should not be funny in the first place? ”
Whether a talk show is an "offensive" art or not is a matter of opinion. But "offense" is indeed becoming the traffic of laughing fruit culture is also a wealth code. On the Internet, using a clear sense of "identity" to spark discussion is a common way to attract traffic. Yang Kasa quickly became popular after the transformation from the original typical "hate marriage" persona to the "disgusting man" persona, in fact, it is precisely because he stepped on the enduring public opinion of the two sexes topic on the Internet and won wide attention through "labeling".
In the early stage of the development of the industry, the question of what a talk show should be like seems to be no one can answer, when "a hundred flowers bloom", "output views" and "set up special people" are a way to quickly obtain traffic. Yang Kasa's attempt has produced obvious results, and has also brought commercial value such as endorsement to the company, but it has also caused resistance from some male netizens.
For talk shows and laughing fruit culture, this is undoubtedly a double-edged sword. When launching an online program for a national audience, where is the boundary of "offense" in the content has become an inescapable problem of laughing fruit culture. The content and theme of the talk show are not unlimited. In China, the talk show industry still lacks the same mature system as overseas, and it also lacks the content output of professional screenwriters.
In the second half of the fifth season of this year's spit conference, the "sports special" was also suspended due to content problems.
In August this year, Li was ordered by the Beijing Haidian District Market Supervision Bureau to confiscate 225,500 yuan of illegal gains and fined 651,100 yuan, a total of 870,000 yuan, for publishing illegal advertisements. Although Li's advertisement has nothing to do with talk shows, it is also a problem with the boundaries of "offense".
Some insiders said that from a nationwide perspective, there are only two or three hundred active actors in this industry, and the laughing fruit culture is a big but not deeply rooted. "In the final analysis, talk shows are still a weak culture in China, and the laughing fruit culture is bound to coexist with controversy for a long time in the future." Liu Xing said. Based on the pure online form of expression, limited by the scale of the performance content and theme, "Talk Show Conference" will have to continue to swim on the boundary line of "ridicule" and survive in the cracks.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="111" > talk shows remain niche</h1>
The popularity of the third season of "Talk Show Conference" has set off a hot discussion in the market about whether the talk show industry is about to usher in the wind outlet. However, online programs have always been only a form of performance that can help talk shows become more widely popular, and whether they can really feed back to offline performances is a sign of the mature development of the entire industry. As Guo Degang said, "Whether the audience is willing to pay for tickets to see you is the real recognition of this art form." ”
In this regard, Li Shi also "Versailles" ridiculed, in the past year, talk show actors began to walk sideways, laughing fruit offline performance tickets have become hard currency, can be used as money. But this is only for a few actors who have emerged in the four seasons of the "Talk Show Conference" in the past, such as Hulan, Yang Kasa and other offline tickets have indeed been rapidly speculated from tens of yuan and hundreds of yuan in the past to hundreds of yuan or even thousands of yuan. An industry insider said that most newcomer talk show actors who need to talk at least 30 times a month to just be able to feed themselves are common.
Industry insiders told AI Finance and Economics that if they leave the aura of the "Talk Show Conference", the development of the entire talk show industry offline is still "primary and niche".
In Chongqing during the National Day holiday, the original comedy talk show Jiefangbei Small Theater is popular. Its performance field is not very large, and the total number of spectators that can be accommodated in each show is about 70-80 people. The original comedy is fixed at 8 o'clock every night, and if there is a small long holiday such as National Day, there will be an afternoon show. Among them, the single ticket price during holidays and rest days is 88 yuan / person, and the double package ticket is 160 yuan; the weekday ticket price is relatively cheap, 68 yuan / person for a single person, and the double package is 120 yuan. The guests of each talk show performance are generally 4 people, and the single performance time is basically about 20 minutes, plus the host's series of performances, the whole performance is about two hours.
Founded at the end of 2019, the original comedy talk show team is led by Xu Lideben, a drama actor who has accumulated some stage performance experience when he studied acting at the Sichuan Film and Television Academy. According to Xu Lide to AI Finance and Economics, after the "Talk Show Conference", many cities have indeed blown up a "talk show wind", "but it is generally emerging in first- and second-tier cities, which is far from enough for the development of the entire industry, and has not yet spread to third-tier cities." And most of the places still appear in the form of clubs, and the actors are basically part-time, because of the love and freshness of the small team performance. ”
In order to ensure the treatment of full-time actors, the company had to arrange daily performances, "so that a theater needs at least 5-8 people to survive," and confined to the development of the entire industry is still niche, lack of talent, the original comedy talk show team currently only opened a small theater, "the new theater is also planning, but full-time stand-up actors in talk shows are still difficult to recruit, we don't have much room to choose." Xu Lide said.
In this industry, there is still a lack of leading actors in the industry. And this is not something that a "star internet celebrity" like Li Xueqin and a program can change.
Moreover, as an imported product, talk shows have not developed for a long time in China, and the entire industry has not formed a mature methodology in talent training and work creation. In China, the most experienced stand-up comedians have only six or seven years of performance time, and most young people who have entered the industry are still facing the problems of lack of training mechanisms and lack of opportunities to make money. "Everyone is crossing the river by feeling the stones, and we can only guide the actors' works and performances by reading foreign books, such as Xiaoguo Culture, which will also translate some foreign works, plus my own stage performance experience as a drama actor, as well as the audience's live reaction." Xu Lide said.
Under the shortage of talents in the market as a whole, the sense of smell of laughing fruit culture can only be more acute, and in recent years, it has continuously recruited talents with the golden signboard of "talk show conference". The single-person comedy that focuses on offline performances and the laughing fruit culture have also formed a tacit cooperative relationship. For example, stand-up comedians Yang Kasa and Yang Meng'en have all been actors in stand-alone comedies; Zhou Qimo, known as the "ceiling" of talk shows, has "stood" at two consecutive talk show conferences, but is still affiliated with stand-alone comedy; and Xu Zhisheng, the "dark horse" of this year's talk show conference, has just officially signed a contract with stand-up comedy in 2020.
In Liu Xing's view, the founding team of Xiaoguo Culture has a rich TV background in addition to Li Shi, so it also makes Xiaoguo Culture quickly popular by relying on online variety shows at the beginning, but at the same time, the shortcomings of offline talent training have gradually emerged.
"Laughing Fruit Culture is indeed the head of the industry, and there are many talk show actors who really achieve commercial value by first speaking well in other places, and then signing a contract with Laughing Fruit Culture to gain higher visibility." But the culture of talk shows is still in its infancy, which means that challenges and opportunities coexist. Everyone's love for new things and the market's unknown to talk shows, for the talk show offline theater, there are actually endless opportunities. Liu Xing said, "This is also why many talk show actors are actually not so blindly trying to squeeze into the laughing fruit culture, and if the popularity of the "Talk Show Conference" continues to decrease, the existing industry advantages of the laughing fruit culture are not without the possibility of being gradually smoothed out." ”
At the same time, the continuous wait-and-see attitude of capital is also an aspect of the industry's development that is still niche. Nowadays, the industry has the most financing is still the head enterprise Xiaoguo Culture, which has completed 8 rounds of financing since 2016, and the investors include Tiantu Capital, Nanshan Capital and Tencent affiliates. And the Shan Li Ren Comedy, which has also been slightly famous in China and has continuously sent talents to Xiaoguo Culture for many years, is the Beijing Shan Li Ren Culture Media Co., Ltd. since taking a round of A round financing of tens of millions of yuan in 2018, and there has been no new financing news so far.
"But laymen like to watch the bustle." Xu Lide said that there are some traditional capitals such as real estate bosses who show enthusiasm for some local talk show clubs, "but when they came up to negotiate, they wanted equity, which did not help the overall development of the team." ”
(Liu Xing is a pseudonym)
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