People behind the renaissance of talk shows are moving towards the front desk, becoming a new trend

Talk shows, which were born out of Western culture and have gone through 20 years of localization, have become one of the variety fields where online video platforms and satellite TV channels are working together. In recent years,"hot" variety shows such as "Roast Conference","Qi Qi Shuo" and "Mars Intelligence Agency", which have successively created ratings highs, have become market leaders in innovation in talk show models.

In the first quarter of 2017, with the outbreak of a new round of online variety shows, many "old trees" began to develop new branches. The second season of "Roast Conference" has a total of 10 issues. With a total of nearly 1.4 billion video views on Tencent, it has become the "popular chicken" of the first season of online variety shows in 2017.

"Roast" was introduced from Comedy Central Roast, a TV program on Comedy Central in the United States. It takes the "Roast culture" as the entry point. Each program invites a topic celebrity to accept complaints and self-deprecation: In each episode, there is a celebrity who was criticized. Seven guests took turns on stage to ridicule each other, and then ridiculed and satirize the host. Finally, the host came on stage to retaliate against the guests.

Talk shows, which were born out of Western culture and have gone through 20 years of localization, have become one of the variety fields where online video platforms and satellite TV channels are working together. In recent years,"hot" variety shows such as "Roast Conference","Qi Qi Shuo" and "Mars Intelligence Agency", which have successively created ratings highs, have become market leaders in innovation in talk show models.

The essence of complaints is to restore reality.

In 1996,"Tell the Truth" opened a door to mainland TV talk shows in China.

In the early days, the quality of talk shows relied more on the host's personal abilities and performance style. Cui Yongyuan worked between topics and guests, targeted social hot spots, and spoke bluntly about the root causes of problems. This enabled "Tell the Truth" to successfully create its own unique brand while imitating the American "Oprah Winfrey Show" model.

The sharp and direct language style of "Tell the Truth" is the prototype of "spit". "Tell the truth" to some extent represents the essence of complaint-using the truth to reveal contradictions and implicitly conforms to the audience's psychological expectations.

"Tell the Truth" was once one of CCTV's most successful talk programs. However, with the decline in ratings and the suspension of programs, the handful of early "hosting fronts" gradually faded out of the once hot experimental field of talk shows.

Subsequently, Cui Yongyuan-style truth-telling style was gradually replaced by a new market orientation: intensive output of paragraphs, mutual ridicule that challenges the three views, and frequent interlude of funny tricks have gradually become the "mainstream" style of talk show programs in recent years. However, due to repeated criticism, the talk show production team has reconsidered model innovation.

Facts have proved that China's version of "Roast Conference" and "The Big Incident" and other online comics such as "Roast Event" use the outspoken words of guests and hosts to export cutting-edge opinions that are popular among young audiences, making variety shows a show that explores the interest of stars and social topics.

Dare to tell the truth has become the most appropriate pronoun for complaining. In the "Roast Conference", Xiao Shenyang's "outdated", Da Zhang Wei's "plagiarism", Tang Guoqiang's "frequent endorsements", Li Xiaolu's "plastic surgery rumors", Xue Zhiqian's "singing out of tune", Cao Yunjin's "teacher-apprentice discord", and the "rural flavor" of the legend of Phoenix have all become the main lines of complaints in the current period.

In talk shows such as "Strange Talks" broadcast by iQiyi and Youku's self-made "Crazy Faitiao Jun", debate has become another way to restore reality in addition to complaining. Stars and debating masters form teams on the side, forming a confrontation between the two sides with conflicting topics. Humorous elements are integrated into the tit-for-tat debate, firmly grasping the excitement of the audience, and the truth becomes clearer and clearer.

These two types of talk show programs have sprung up in the past two years.

The program's "moves"

In the current battle for talk shows among major TV stations, Dragon TV's "Tonight's Post-80s Talk Show" and "The Golden Star Show" rely on their respective targeted target groups and strong production teams to achieve good ratings in market segments.

Take "The Golden Star Show" as an example. Each 30-minute personal talk show performance on Jinxing has about 10,000 words in text. Among the 10-person creative and editorial team, 4 to 5 directors also serve as diversity writers. Such a team is still weak in supporting the tense rhythm of weekly broadcasts. It is not difficult to understand why the current talk show has gradually become a "hardest hit area" with a pile of jokes.

Whether it is stars who "spit out" to each other or celebrities who slander themselves, talk shows in the Internet environment, as language variety shows with stars and celebrities as the main body, in a disguised way, realize the real-life interpretation of netizens "bullet screen style". Multi-dimensional interactions with netizens were mentioned many times by the planner Li Dan in the "Roast Conference".

"Zhang Shaogang quits the show", which was the most popular among netizens, was successfully used as a derivative burden and turned into a secondary joke on the program platform due to the guests 'repeated ridicule and Zhang Shaogang's self-criticism. The comments from netizens in the bullet screen are essentially the same as those from celebrity guests. This material production model of online and offline integration and reconstruction has deeply influenced the text creation of talk show programs, and has the wisdom of "coming from the masses, going to the masses".

In terms of the design of program themes, voice-type talk shows are also constantly subdivided into new content. "The Big Incident" relies on the comic style deeply influenced by Japan's secondary culture, integrates multi-disciplinary knowledge, and interprets social hot spots in a relaxed and humorous way.

The innovations in content and form of these programs have also indirectly affected the form of other categories of talk shows. As a representative of the mash-and-match talk show,"Mars Intelligence Agency" cleverly turns the wonderful discussions among members into "mutual resentment" elements with the nature of voicing by introducing "agent" and "submission of bills" mechanisms. This kind of situation setting has enabled the producer to gain a huge audience.

In addition, popular talk shows have without exception turned advertising placement into a burden display that audiences like to see. "Roast Conference" interprets a certain brand of loquat dew as "laughing to nourish the lungs, but not laughing to waste." The title advertisement of "Strange Qi Shuo" is often inserted into the concluding statement by Ma Dong, while the oral advertising in "Mars Intelligence Agency" is replaced by Liu Wei's pleasing dance and rap. Turn boring into popular, bundle sarcastic points into advertising, and in voice-type talk shows, there are materials that can play the voice-out function everywhere.

To control the "scale"

of complaints talk shows, we must control the "scale" of complaints-leaning to the left will lead away young people who are easily emotional, and leaning to the right will become general due to the lack of "hot spots."

In fact, China talk shows are much softer than American talk shows. American talk show hosts are good at using sarcastic and mischievous methods to explain content or stimulate guests to speak, while China's talk show programs tend to be more humorous and entertaining from the perspective of the guests.

It is not difficult to see from the American version of "Roast Conference" that many stars have become stuck in the siege of guests, Justin. Bieber once appeared too impatient on the show because of guests 'complaints, and finally had to apologize on the show.

On the contrary, in China, given the control over the scale and effect of content, there is generally no situation where the scene gets out of control. The program production team's strictness is not beyond the bounds, but it is actually a dual responsibility to the stars and the audience. The director-in-chief of "Roast Conference" once said,"We are not making personal attacks without a bottom line, but using wisdom and humor to resolve misunderstandings between public figures and the audience."

Yang Zhifan, a TV commentator and founder of "Watching TV with Cold Eyes", explained the psychology of stars participating in voicing talk shows: "Self-hacking will make viewers feel that this person is very real and cute. This is the current star routine of 'road to fan'."

Compared with the "routines" of stars, as Ma Dong, the producer of "The Strange Talks", said, everything can be changed in a program, except for the speculative nature. If the speculative nature is abandoned just for the sake of boldness and boldness, then even if it is an innovative program, it will quickly be "routine".

Qiu Yue, deputy general manager of Penguin Film and Television's homemade variety business department, said,"When making programs, no one has the purpose of whitewashing stars."

Variety shows can be "rice variety shows" that are relaxed and casual without too much brainstorming, or can be variety shows that can be used as "rice"-they are highly knowledgeable, have dry goods, and can provide guidance to the audience in certain aspects. Whether it is positioned as a "rice variety show" or a variety show that can be used as a "rice", program producers must be sincere and dedicated to the audience's candid humor. This is about how much tacit understanding and trust the audience is willing to achieve with a variety show in addition to laughter.

The concern of some practitioners is that non-impromptu performances are currently common in domestic talk shows-most of the lines have been written in advance and rehearsed in advance. Huang Xi, host of CCTV's "Is it Really" program, believes that what China talk shows need most is not "relaxation", but the host's "cultivation".

A good talk show host is the guide of the program scene and the regulator of the rhythm of the scene. Whether the host's comprehensive ability is comprehensive and his ability to control the program directly affect the quality of the program and the ratings. It can be said that a good program host is the key to the success of a talk show.

In recent years, well-known talk show programs at home and abroad have basically formed a stable model with the host as the core of the structure, the behind-the-scenes text team as the content support, and guest stars and resident guests as the topic center. In the current dilemma of scarce outstanding talk show hosts and difficult to discover new people, the internal structure of the production team has begun to undergo a hierarchical leap.

From the transformation of well-known American screenwriter Louis C.K. to domestic TV producer Luo Zhenyu, behind-the-scenes planner Li Dan, screenwriter Shi Hang and others, we can see that the trend of screenwriters and behind-the-scenes producers coming to the stage is becoming a new trend of "revival" of talk shows.

Editor: Nancy