Many young friends may find that when they come home from the Spring Festival, their parents are watching the "Chinese Poetry Conference", and when they mention popular variety shows among other young people, their parents are often ignorant.

I don't know when we began to learn about a variety show. The way we learned about it is more and more some sensational news, noisy disputes, and hot search keywords everywhere. In those years, there are fewer and fewer family reunion programs that allow the whole family to get together. Why are there fewer and fewer good programs under vertical and segmented slogans?

It seems hard to imagine that the audience rating data of the fourth quarter finals of the gentle Chinese Poetry Conference is only second to the News Network and the weather forecast. The final "Flying Flower Order" battle between contestants Chen Geng and Sun Xiaojing was dubbed "Immortal Fight" by the audience. In today's TV variety show market, it is rare for a program like the Poetry Conference to win audiences only by relying on the quality of the program itself, which has no flow stars, no surprising remarks, and no "dramatic conflicts".

When you think about the variety show during the Spring Festival that can let all the people sit down and watch, you have no choice but the Chinese Poetry Conference. Otherwise, there are brave men who are willing to watch My Daughter and argue with their families about contemporary women's love and marriage, or line up a row of parents and partners with Papi sauce. Who should be more advanced? Or else, open the video website, watch the idol selection variety show with your parents, exchange views on contemporary youth aesthetics, or listen to guests lament the impetuosity of the market? I can't even think about it.

There is no denying that "My Girl", a program that actively touches intergenerational conflicts, has its value and significance. But looking at today's variety show market, we either buy or adapt, and there is no lack of the most advanced program forms in any country in the world. Japan, South Korea, Europe, America, and Mingxing are all well equipped. But somehow, when we turn on the TV, I still miss the days when such programs as Zhengda Variety, Quyuan Zatan, Happy Dictionary and Lucky 52 are still on the air.

In today's era of focusing on the vertical perfection of the field, market segmentation and focusing on young people and women with the strongest consumption ability have become the main targets. Under such a dominant ideology, program producers rarely consider whether a variety show can be watched by the whole family. Admittedly, in the current communication pattern, the production of TV programs itself is indeed facing great difficulties. It seems that young people will no longer sit in front of the TV and watch programs. In order to retain young audiences, the producers of variety shows have also tried their best to use the "young people's way" to do fancy shows.

However, this is essentially a circular problem. There are fewer young people watching TV. In order to win the market, programs can only adopt niche strategies to attract some young audiences, which leads to the large-scale conversion of variety shows to the network platform, making it more difficult for young people to return to the TV, and so on. Now, it's hard for us to watch TV with our parents.

Even programs only for young people are increasingly full of routines, and can no longer retain audiences by "freshness". It's no exaggeration to say that today's variety show can't be regarded as a good program without several hot searches. In order to be popular, program production must try every means to create a topic of "making trouble from nothing". We are very familiar with the specific routine. Let me summarize it for you. The first is to invite stars with their own topics to participate in the program, so that the star's own topic and popularity can bring a wave of hot search on the program. This operation is mainly about watching people. As long as the current big traffic star, he/she can be hot search every look and smile. Secondly, after the program was launched, it created a wave of popularity through the performance of stars and out of context comments. This operation is a popular way of production in almost all variety shows. Typical cases include the unforgettable performance of several sisters in the previous "Flowers and Teenagers", as well as the devil clips of several recent variety shows. Thirdly, a little more advanced is that the opposite public opinion is aroused through the topic of program creation, which is the most common in language debate programs such as Qipa Shuo.

No matter how cool the variety show is, the theme around it is still the reflection and re presentation of the real society. Good programs always reproduce, discuss or interpret the present in their own way. But without exception, realism is the premise. However, without exception, the popularity of the current variety show busy with hot search is always full of "artificial" quality through lens editing, guest's comments, and script design conflicts. They also seem to touch the reality, but they are always unable to touch the essence.

The deliberately created heat even brings many effects that tear apart public opinion, which is why it is difficult for us to find a variety show that we can watch with our families in comfort today. We lost the TV scene of "family reunion" in the living room.

Mass communication bears the responsibility of bridging the society, just as we always need the Spring Festival Gala. In any case, it provides us with a celebration ceremony of "sharing the moment across the globe" for global Chinese. In daily life, there is also a need for variety shows with excellent content to enable the family to enjoy their leisure time. Such programs may not be able to quickly climb the hot search list, but their constant companionship is the most popular.

□ Ji Ruze (entertainment reviewer)

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