Wen | Xiao Gu Dong

The blessing of science and technology and the upgrading of world outlook are the first impressions of Reading Entertainment Jun on the variety market in the first half of the year. From Acceleration of All Staff, which focuses on the overlapping of the real world and the meta-universe, to Escape from the Chamber of Secrets 5, which focuses on infinite flow’s concept, and then to Beautiful Battle, which has a specific theme world and plot in each issue, variety shows not only have a full opening way of film and television, but also have a close integration with the popular elements of the entertainment industry, which meets the content needs of vertical audiences and continuously refreshes the public’s cognition of variety shows.

The contents of the variety show as a whole are basic, and the contents that are popular and normalized are still new. By the middle of the year, the variety market has made remarkable achievements. According to the data of Lighthouse Professional Edition, in the first half of the year, the king of variety shows all over the fields of music, reasoning, outdoor, love observation and rap, and each track has distinctive masterpieces to accurately meet the needs of all categories of enthusiasts.

Of course, in addition to these programs, there are two programs with distinct identities. The first is "Planting the Land", which is the first in the industry, whether it is the theme idea or the derivative of the production chain. The second is "Infinite Beyond Class", which can be said to be a ride on the social platform. According to the data of Lighthouse Professional Edition, in the list of public opinion popularity in the first half of the variety show, Infinite Beyond Class is located in TOP1 in January and March, and it is the only new variety show, which has great advantages in public opinion popularity.

Data is a great reference for insight into the trend of variety industry, and it is also closely related to the basic disc of the program. Looking back at the variety market in the first half of the year, the four categories of all-female variety, social variety, outdoor variety and music variety have become popular tracks, but their profiles and characteristics are different, and the signals released during them have sounded the outpost for the second half of the variety.

Variety shows from love women’s perspective have always been in the content market, from the life experience show "Here We Come" to the couples’ emotional healing program "The Romantic Journey of the Wife", from the innovative variety situation show "Sister Club" focusing on women’s topics to the martial arts school management experience reality show "Sister’s Martial Arts School", exploring the content boundaries with different themes.

Judging from this year’s variety shows, love women Variety is advancing to the dimension of all-female variety, bringing more fashionable female topics and new female values into public view, and promoting the awakening of female consciousness and the iteration of female values.

The first is the program elements that are integrated into the trend. Under the background of hot reasoning and great concern in the workplace, Mango TV launched the Women’s Reasoning Society, which integrates all-female elements, reasoning, workplace and other popular elements. Stephy, Yuqi Zhang, Li Yitong, Li Xueqin, Tian Xiwei and Zhang Yifan formed the "Good Reasoning Society", which jointly solved many cases, such as rescuing San Ban Island, three consecutive crimes, an amazing and fatal layoff, and showed women’s case reasoning in a panoramic way.

The second is to dismantle women’s issues with outdoor challenges. Iqiyi launched the outdoor game reality show "Beautiful Battle", which was composed of Guan Le, Zoey, Wang Meng, YCY and Yuqi Zhang, challenging the "troubled beast" transformed from the troubles of contemporary young people, releasing unlimited female strength in the multiple challenges of physical strength and intelligence, and breaking all kinds of prejudices and shackles against women in society.

The third is to export women’s values by talking. The talk show "Let’s Talk" with Fu Seoul, Yang Li, Yi Lijing and Yang Tianzhen as guests was inspired by the jokes of the guests during the live broadcast, and a series of topics were exported from the perspective of mature women, providing viewers with new perspectives and new thoughts. Therefore, the program is self-positioned as "electronic bird’s nest", which can not only fill the leisure time of users with fun, but also provide them with new ideas.

Not only is the domestic development in full swing, but the all-female variety show is also constantly refreshing its opening mode overseas. The all-female survival competitive variety "The Call of the Siren: The Battle of the Fire Island", which scored as high as 9.6 points on Douban, is a typical example. Compared with the domestic all-female variety show, the style of The Call of the Sea Demon: The Island of Fire is more hardcore. Twenty-four female contestants from six occupations, including firefighters, policemen, soldiers, guards, athletes and stuntmen, competed for a seven-day survival competition of "the law of the jungle" in an uninhabited island of 30,000 square meters, and collided with the most real human nature in the extreme competition system.

Social variety is a new concept that has emerged in recent years, either conducting social experiments around the assumed social ecology or presenting fun based on the real original relationship, all of which are related to the world view set by the program, providing rich scenes and fulcrums for the presentation of social behavior.

The experiment of social life continues. Following the Beijing story and the seaside story, the life social observation reality show "Fifty Kilometers of Peach Blossom House" launched by Tencent Video ushered in a Shan Ye story with the theme of "going to the mountains and going inward", which continued the previous program mode and created a new series of famous scenes-from Ren Min and Tang Jingmei’s disagreement due to poor communication, to Eric Wang and Dylan waiting for the sunrise in the exile cabin, or Zoey.

Friends’ relationship variety shows set off a craze. In addition to the annual variety Mao Xuewang, which revolves around the original friendship, Tencent Video, Youku and Mango TV have recently launched the urban food exploration variety "Friends invite you to dinner", the variety focusing on acquaintances’ socialization "Weekend is a good friend" and "Happy Adults" respectively. The commonness of these three programs is to create around friends, or to integrate food elements, or to take friends’ weekend life as the theme, or to find the secret of "happy life" for contemporary young people, so as to show the state of getting along with friends of different ages and intimate levels and inject richer connotations into friendship.

The combination of social activities and outdoor activities has become a new trend. Before that, Jiangsu Satellite TV started the social reality show "Wild Fun" following the "outing". The star guests accepted the entrustment and turned into an activity planning team to formulate a theme carnival full of wild fun every week, which not only enriched the youth’s life, but also innovated and upgraded ecological landmarks to help rural revitalization. Later, there was the "trend sports version of deformation" created by iQiyi, "Let’s go! Fun Wild Bar, with OG in the circle leading novice artists to participate in outdoor sports as the gameplay, shows the attitudes and cultures of life in different sports circles, at the same time, enhances the social concept, integrates nature, and experiences different lives by going out of the city and integrating into nature.

Focusing on the social relationship between people, the differences present the social reality in a specific theme field. Such programs continue to innovate the opening way of social variety, which not only brings new content experience to the audience, but also allows the audience to understand the social stories of stars, expand their personal cognition of socialization, and then feed back their inner growth.

Outdoor and music have always been the content chassis of the variety industry. But this year, it is obvious that these two kinds of programs are new, but they can’t feel the popularity and out of the circle of the programs, and it is difficult to return to the past highlights.

With the liberalization of the big environment, more and more variety shows are going outdoors. Although the series of outdoor comprehensive N-generation programs such as Run, Extreme Challenge and Travel Notes around Youth have a mediocre reputation, they are always in an advantageous position on the major lists. On the one hand, the "pre-explosive IP" headed by "All Staff Acceleration" has returned strongly, and on the other hand, the travel synthesis represented by "Travel Jumping into Geography Book" has continued the classic gameplay in the past, or integrated into the youth trend culture such as camping, traveling and socializing, which makes the track more and more voluminous in the vertical subdivision of the program.

On the other hand, on the music track, from the program innovation to the content mode, the sense of relaxation overflowed the screen. Looking back at the variety market in the first half of this year, in addition to "Sound Endless Treasure Island Season", "Time Concert 2", "I want to sing with you 4" and "God-given Voice 4", music variety is still looking for innovative ways.

Or subdivide from music category and source, such as "Our Folk Songs 2022" and "Beautiful Songs of Drama", or innovate music collection, "Go dazzle! Music school went to different cities to collect music and find creative inspiration; Or looking for a music stage, emphasizing the healing power of music, Decibel is on the run, and musician LiveHouse’s business reality show, Music Warehouse No.17, the commonality of this series of programs lies in the low proportion of homogeneity in genre, and weakening the sense of competition and suspense in mode, highlighting the purity of music with more relaxed rules, and awakening the public’s perception and love for music with more tentacles.

However, the summer file has arrived, with Tencent’s videos "Youth Travel", "Stage 2023" and iQiyi’s "Summer of the Band 3" and "Struggle! It remains to be seen whether the emergence of programs such as Freshman Class One and bilibili’s New Girl 2023 can break the development situation of the sound synthesis Buddhism system and bring more content explosion points.

From the upsurge of all-female variety shows to the rise of social variety shows, from the involution of outdoor variety shows to the relaxation of music variety shows, behind the speed change of variety shows, it is a macro adjustment that conforms to the laws of the content market, which not only brings users a differentiated sense of content, but also brings new content trends to the variety industry. Looking at the moment, it is at the beginning of the summer file, and major platforms are also adding strength to the variety plate, which will help the variety show in the second half of the year to start the game.

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