Who are you calling powerful?.

Chapter 640: The rise of Zhejiang TV variety shows and "Longing for Life" (update on the 10th)
In late October, the box office of "Dying to Survive" officially exceeded 10 billion.

Although it has obtained the extension key, the box office momentum has declined. It is hard to say whether it can surpass the second-ranked "Detective Chinatown 2", but it still has a chance to compete with "The Mermaid".

Blue Whale also held a celebration party for the third time this year!

In fact, Wei Yang, who has not yet completely gotten rid of the Zhao Liying childbirth storm, originally wanted to keep a low profile, but "Detective Chinatown 2" and "Wolf Warrior 2" had already held celebration banquets, so it would be inappropriate to favor one over the other when it comes to "Dying to Survive".

Although Boss Wei tried his best to stay out of the spotlight on the day of the celebration banquet, as a person directly involved, he still attracted considerable attention.

The three celebration banquets held by Blue Whale this year were also hotly discussed by the outside world.

In fact, Blue Whale has held more than three celebration banquets this year.

The small screen shows "Eternal Love", "Zhu Xian" and "In the Name of People", as well as the two ace variety shows "Running Man" and "Go Fighting" and the new variety shows "The Next Generation of Stars" and "National Treasure" have all held celebration banquets, but the scale and imagination are not as big as these three movies.

There was no other way. Once the ice sculptures worth 30 billion and 50 billion were smashed, the display would be filled to the brim.

At the same time, these three films themselves carry extraordinary significance.

The popularity of "Detective Chinatown 2", together with the total box office of the first film, has exceeded 60 billion.

This marks the emergence of an extremely stable and successful commercial film series in domestic films.

Because it is developing web series and peripheral elements, many people believe that "Detective Chinatown" is building a mature movie universe.

Although the total box office of the "Wolf Warrior" series has exceeded 60 billion, the second part was too unexpected. At least so far, the comprehensive influence of the entire IP is not enough to compete with the "Detective Chinatown" series.

But this does not mean that "Wolf Warrior 2" is bad.

On the contrary, Wolf Warrior 2 has dramatically improved the box office records of movies and TV series, and has had a profound impact on domestic films and the mainland film market. It is undoubtedly the most dazzling star in the film industry this year.

Compared with the previous two films, "Dying to Survive" is stronger in its excellent quality and the social significance it evokes.

The latter, in particular, has received a great response in the industry and among movie fans. It is conceivable that it will become a banner of Chinese-language films, guiding and inspiring filmmakers to explore and dig into realistic themes and assume the cultural and educational value of films beyond entertainment, art and economy.

Some film critics have said that this year's three films by Blue Whale are also three bombs thrown at the film industry.

It not only blew up countless arrogant and rebellious filmmakers, but also demonstrated Blue Whale's dominance and responsibility as the industry leader. Boss Wei's great sentiments are both precious and commendable.

Boss Wei accepted all this talk. The movie had already been plagiarized, so why should he keep his dignity?
that's right!
I am so far-sighted and hardworking, and I have devoted my heart and soul to the rise of China's film and television industry. I am moved just thinking about it...

...

After going on stage and smashing the ice sculpture, Boss Wei did not speak, but gave the opportunity to Blue Whale General Manager Xia Cong and Director Wen Muye.

The latter also gained fame with "Dying to Survive" and became a new star director.

However, in the eyes of many people, he is relying on Wei Yang, and he has two seniors, Yan Fei and Peng Damo, in front of him. Therefore, if he wants to gain a firm foothold and even be promoted to a famous director, he must achieve some results independently.

Just like Yan and Peng, they were only recognized by the industry after "Charlotte's Troubles".

A speech was being given on the stage. The banquet had just begun and Boss Wei couldn't run away, so he chatted with Zhang Guoli who came to support the banquet.

Zhang Guoli is considered a member of the Beijing circle and is very close to Huayi, but he is not a Huayi employee. The two sides are more inclined to cooperate.

Although Blue Whale and Huayi are not on good terms, this old fox has never been involved in the fight between the two sides. On the one hand, it is on good terms with Huayi, but it will never offend the enemy boss Wei, and has even made overtures to the latter many times, trying to please both sides.

The entertainment industry is full of complicated factions, and everyone wants to be good at everything, but not many people have the ability and confidence to do so.

Zhang Guoli is one of them. At least Huayi can please him, and Boss Wei has no bad feelings towards him.

He also caught up with the Blue Whale and PPTV's joint CCTV project "National Treasure", and had contact and cooperation with the Blue Whale series.

It is hard to say what other ideas Zhang Guoli has. After all, everyone can see that Blue Whale is powerful and Huayi is no match for it.

He is not like Feng Kuazi who has offended Boss Wei and is too closely tied to Huayi. It is time to change course.

It’s not that Zhang Guoli wants to take sides or join Boss Wei. He is old and has a strong foundation, so he won’t be so flattering.

I'm just trying to send out a friendly signal. I'm not a die-hard Huayi fan, I just want to make some money for my retirement. If you fight, please don't hurt anyone by mistake.

Zhang Guoli's attitude also shows which direction the entertainment industry is blowing now.

In the past, Zhang was inclined towards Huayi. Even if he was not a die-hard Huayi fan, he was definitely a backbone of the Huayi system. But now he has taken the initiative to show goodwill and cooperation with Blue Whale.

This is equivalent to Hu Ge ignoring Boss Wei and turning around to shoot a movie for Huayi. Either he has lost his mind, or Blue Whale and Boss Wei can no longer control the situation.

Although this metaphor may not be appropriate and its nature is not that serious, the meaning behind it is the same.

Huayi is pulling!

Even the old hands with whom they have worked closely for many years are no longer optimistic about them. The trend in the entertainment industry is in Blue Whale.

"When will the variety show that Mr. Zhang is collaborating with Zhejiang TV be released?"

"You mean 'The Birth of an Actor'? It's going to be the end of this month. How about that, Mr. Wei, are you interested?"

"With you and Teacher Dandan, as well as International Zhang and Liu Huohua, such a luxurious lineup, how could I not be interested."

Wei Yang smiled and said, "PPTV is still negotiating with Zhejiang TV to buy the copyright, but unfortunately Penguin offered a higher price."

"That's a pity. I was thinking about coming to the Magic City again to attend the celebration party."

"Hahaha, there is a chance. National Treasure has a good influence. We need to keep up the good work next year. Then we will have to rely on Teacher Zhang's efforts."

"It should."

After chatting for a while, the vice president in charge of Blue Whale variety shows came over. Zhang Guoli was very perceptive and said a few more words before leaving with an excuse.

The vice president who stayed behind glanced at Zhang's departing back and thought about what they had just talked about.

"Boss, is 'The Birth of an Actor' really going to be a big hit?"

Wei Yang asked back: "Why, you don't think it's a good idea?"

"I think it can be popular, but I'm afraid it's not enough to be popular."

As the general manager of Blue Whale Variety Show, the vice president has a deep understanding of variety shows. His judgment on this variety show is based not only on market factors, but also on past experience.

After "The Voice of China" became popular, many variety shows imitated it, including "I Think You Have Talent", which is aimed at actor auditions.

It is also a production of Zhejiang TV, with the influence of Huayi and Cheng Long behind it. It has a strong lineup of mentors, including Cheng Long, Feng Kuazi, Li Bingbing and Zhang Guoli who just left.

Despite such a configuration, this variety show hardly made any splash.

There is no way. It is much more difficult for amateur actors to perform outstandingly on stage in a short period of time and impress the audience than for singers.

The later variety show "Swordsman" learned from the lesson of this variety show and limited the contestants to the comedy level.

Different from film and television actors, most comedians come from a stage background, so they have an advantage in this regard. Their performance and audience feedback are also more intuitive. It all depends on whether their performance is funny or not.

The vice president also conducted an investigation and found out that "The Birth of the Actors" made a lot of improvements compared to the previous "I Think You Have Talent".

For example, turning amateur actors into competitive stars!

Similar to "The Voice of China" being upgraded to "I Am a Singer" and "Swordsman" being upgraded to "Happy Comedian".

Players with celebrity auras can attract more audiences and have a higher level of professionalism. At the same time, the introduction of real scenes and objects, as well as film and television clips as competition materials, have increased the watchability of the program. But that's all. Compared with singing and sketches and crosstalk, film and television performances have a high threshold for viewing and lack stage explosiveness.

It can be said that "The Birth of the Actors" was inherently flawed from the very beginning, and it is more difficult for it to become a hit than music variety shows and comedy variety shows with the same conditions.

So the vice president insisted on his own opinion, and many people from Blue Whale and PPTV also supported him.

So after the price exceeded their reserve price, PPTV did not insist on competing with Penguin for this variety show.

Seeing the vice president insisting on his own opinion, Wei Yang sighed inwardly. In fact, he did not make a misjudgment, but just underestimated the bottom line of some of his peers.

Before this, talent shows or competitive variety shows like this were all about ability and talent.

Who sings better?

See whose skits and crosstalk are funnier!

However, "The Birth of the Actors" took the opposite approach. It did not compete in terms of skills, but rather on who could embarrass themselves.

Things like "Yuan Li goes crazy", "Hai Wa", and "The Ant Race has been going on for ten years" have become popular all over the Internet. One after another, the popular young actors and actresses have actually demonstrated what it means to have high salary and low ability, adding fuel to the fire of the domestic entertainment industry, which already has a bad reputation.

Those who perform poorly have more traffic than those who perform well, and the mentors have a stronger presence than the contestants in the audience.

Even though Zhou Yiwei won the championship in the end, what made him famous was not his acting skills, but his ambiguity and scandal with Zhang Ziyi.

How should I put it? "The Birth of the Actors" is completely disguised as a competitive variety show, but in fact it is a melon field award show in the entertainment industry.
Judging from common sense, it would be strange if the vice president could predict the outcome successfully. It was simply because the enemy was too cunning, not the fault of war.

Besides, even if their prediction was correct, Wei Yang did not support the variety show being launched on PPTV.

What a bad reputation!
There was almost no positive news, all negative and controversial. Even the organizer, Zhejiang TV, was embarrassed.

If you don't operate it well, you may easily get yourself into trouble. PPTV is about to go public and there is no shortage of popular variety shows. There is no need to be greedy for the popularity and money, so as not to lose the big picture for the small.

Wei Yang did not argue with the vice president about the variety show, and instead focused his attention on the Zhejiang Provincial TV station.

In the past few years, the strongest variety shows were held by Hunan TV and Blue Whale, which seemed to be dividing the world into two.

But in fact, in addition to these two giants, there are other forces, such as Zhejiang TV.

He is also quite good at variety shows. Before "Where Are We Going, Dad?" and "Running Man" became reality shows, the most popular variety show was "The Voice of China" on Zhejiang TV.

In recent years, although many good projects have been snatched away by Blue Whale, Zhejiang TV has not given up on cultivating the variety show market.

For example, "Ace vs. Ace" launched last year.

Although the program has not yet found the best permanent MC, relying on the strong platform advantages and connections of Zhejiang TV Station, each episode has invited guests and crews with enough weight and gimmicks to play the emotional card.

Although the routine is a bit simple, the effect is still good and it can be regarded as a popular variety show.

This year, Zhejiang Provincial TV Station started to produce "The Birth of an Actor" and many other activities.

All this shows that Zhejiang TV is unwilling to be suppressed by Blue Whale and Hunan TV, and wants to become the third pole in the variety show field, and has made substantial progress.

Boss Wei is actually quite calm about this, because Zhejiang TV has a fatal flaw, which is that it has no network platform support.

The television market will become increasingly declining in the future, and people will choose to watch TV dramas and variety shows on the Internet.

Blue Whale has PPTV and Hunan TV has Mango TV. These are the confidence of the two companies in dominating the variety show field.

In fact, Zhejiang Provincial TV does have an online platform. They have set up a China Blue TV, but its influence and user base are so small that it is useless.

This will result in the Zhejiang TV station’s variety shows being sent to all major platforms in the future, putting it in a passive situation. How can it win over Blue Whale and PPTV, which already have more advantages?

Therefore, Boss Wei does not have much intention of suppressing Zhejiang TV.

On the contrary, we are interested in cooperating with them, and it would be best if we could obtain the exclusive copyright of their popular variety shows in the future to contribute to the development of PPTV.

Of course, these are mainly normal variety shows. Hot potatoes like "The Birth of the Actors" should be left to other platforms and Zhejiang TV stations to cooperate with.

To be honest, the Zhejiang Provincial TV station is capable, but it is often too unrefined and has too many crooked ways. The Hunan Provincial TV station and the Shanghai TV station are also often not doing their job, but compared with them, they firmly occupy the moral high ground.

This was also the reason why Wei Yang chose to cooperate with Shanghai TV on a variety show instead of Zhejiang TV, which had better variety show conditions.

Although Boss Wei is not a good person, his bottom line is much higher than that of some capitalists and companies...

In addition to Zhejiang TV, Wei Yang also asked about the current progress of new projects of the Blue Whale Variety Department.

The focus at the end of this year and the beginning of next year will be on two variety shows, one is the talent show "Idol Producer", and the other is the pastoral slow-paced variety show "Longing for Life".

There is no need to say much about the former, variety show auditions are actually all pretty much the same.

This year, Blue Whale also launched "The Next Generation of Stars", but this program is more focused on singers, while "Idol Producer" is for popular boy groups.

The latter is the real highlight. Everyone in the Blue Whale Variety Show Department attaches great importance to it. They acquired the copyright early on and are working hard to make it a ace variety show.

Now the program planning of "A Longing for Life" is almost complete, the scenery has been selected, and the main thing is the final communication with the resident guests.

Huang Sanshi is easy to deal with, as he already has "Go Fighting" as a foundation, and the two sides have a good basis for cooperation.

The follower is easy to deal with. If the Blue Whale system can dig it out, then dig it out. If it can’t, then use someone from outside. He is just a foil anyway.

The key problem lies with Teacher He. It is not very convenient for him to accept this variety show.

After all, he is the mainstay of Hunan TV. Blue Whale and Hunan TV are the biggest competitors in variety shows. How could the other party easily let Teacher He come to Blue Whale to record a program? Isn't this aiding the enemy?

This matter is at a standstill!
In Wei Yang's opinion, the follower is not important, Huang Sanshi can also be replaced, after all, he is not the only star who can cook.

He was originally chosen because he and Teacher He are old friends and they can create sparks. This kind of slow variety show requires acquaintances, and the resident MC must be even more familiar.

But the person who cannot be replaced in the entire program is Teacher He. The entire program depends on him to control the stage, welcome and see off guests, be proper and thoughtful, and he is good at creating a warm and lively environment and atmosphere.

This is not only a skill honed through decades of hosting career, but also his personal charm.

There are more slow variety shows than "Longing for Life", and he is not the only host who has participated in slow variety shows. Meng Fei, Sa Beining, and Wang Han have all done similar things, but the results are far less effective.

Wei Yang thought about it for a long time. There are many people who can replace Huang Sanshi, and there are also people who can replace Teacher He, but he can't guarantee whether the program will be changed.

"What does Mr. He mean personally?"

"He wanted to take it. It is said that he had his eyes on this variety show a long time ago, but he bought the copyright later than us. He was very happy that we found him. He recommended Huang Sanshi. But you know, he has no choice. Mr. He has a lot of concerns."

After knowing what Teacher He meant, Wei Yang had a clear idea in his mind and understood where the obstacle lay.

"Then continue the discussion. If you don't release him, it means the price is not enough."

Although there is competition, Blue Whale and Hunan TV have never fallen out. Instead, they have cooperated a lot and are half enemies and half friends.

This situation can obviously be further discussed. At worst, Blue Whale can give two TV drama projects to the Hunan TV Station, or give it a portion of the program investment share and distribute subsequent programs.

If that doesn’t work, then Boss Wei can call personally.

He has many acquaintances at Hunan TV. The trilogy of Joy of Life and many Blue Whale hit projects were broadcast on Hunan TV. He still has some acquaintances. He will find them one by one. I don’t believe that he can’t invite anyone…

(End of this chapter)