This director lacks vision.

Chapter 282 Path Dependency
When Tian Qianwei wanted to seek refuge with Jing Tian, ​​Jiang Yifeng was having dinner with Jing Tian in the hotel restaurant.

Sitting opposite them were Wang Zhengyu, the chief director of "Back to Field", and Sa Beining, a host from Yangshi TV.

After inviting Sa Beining, Jiang Yifeng simply decided to also produce the phenomenal variety show "The Amazing Challenge".

He did not purchase the rights to the Korean program "Infinite Challenge".

There are plenty of challenge-based shows, and the format of "guests donating money to charity if they successfully complete a challenge" has been around for a long time.

As long as the script and segments of the program are not roughly the same, it does not constitute plagiarism.

"The Amazing Challenge" is a purely outdoor variety show, so it has to be fun. It's most suitable to entrust the production to Yan Min.

Therefore, the second season of Longing for Life was directed by Wang Zhengyu alone.

Jiang Yifeng took a sip of his iced cola and said, "This season's program is in your hands. You have to shoulder this heavy responsibility. You can make any requests, but you absolutely cannot fail."

After hearing Jiang Yifeng's words, Wang Zhengyu thought for a moment and put forward his own needs: "This season's program is short-staffed, and I want to recruit some people, but President Mu does not agree."

Fengxing Media is currently producing three variety shows simultaneously.

In addition to the life you yearn for and the incredible challenges, there's also "Happy Comedians," produced under the leadership of Mu Di.

In addition to earning advertising sponsorship fees, producing variety shows also requires promoting the artists of your own company.

Wang Jiaer will participate in the Amazing Challenge, which will help boost his popularity and status;

The goal of "Happy Comedians" is to promote the Happy Twist team.

In the public's view, Happy Twist took off after the movie Goodbye Mr. Loser.

Actually not.

After the 2012 Spring Festival Gala, Happy Twist has been living a very comfortable life.

Throughout 2012, the company performed over a thousand shows, generating revenue of 1.5 million yuan and net profit of around 4000 million yuan. The company's valuation after financing exceeded 3 million yuan.

By 2014, Mahua FunAge had opened multiple branches across the country, with more than 2000 performances.

These are all data from before the release of Goodbye Mr. Loser.

Strictly speaking, before its movies became a hit, Happy Twist was already a leader in the niche field of stage comedy.

The team has a strong ability to produce content, creating at least one or two stage comedy works every year, and frequently appearing on the Spring Festival Gala stage.

Instead, after the movie became a hit, the team shifted their focus to the film industry. Although they made some quick money, the popularity and traffic were concentrated on Shen Teng, and the offline performances became perfunctory, leading to various internal conflicts.

Despite the many limitations of live comedy performances, they have always been very profitable, generating substantial cash flow.

Zhao Benshan's Liu Laogen Grand Stage, Guo Degang's Deyun Society, and all sorts of offline stand-up comedy shows in the future, despite the ups and downs in the market, are all thriving.

After Jiang Yifeng acquired Happy Twist, he had a clear vision for the team: to develop offline stage performances.

As for the adaptation of stage play IPs into film and television, as well as the management of celebrities and artists, these are all handled by Fengxing Media.

Happy Twist aims to become a true "comedy factory" by creating comedy content and cultivating comedy talent through offline performances.

This will not only provide continuous financial support to Fengxing Media, but also allow them to further cultivate the stage comedy market.

In the future, in addition to special effects shows, comedy performances by Happy Twist could be incorporated into Pacific Rim Park to enrich the entertainment offerings.

Happy Twist could even turn movies like "Back to 20" and "Lost in Thailand" into stage comedies to attract audiences to buy tickets.

They had previously worked on "Crazy Stone".

The two sides are complementary.

Therefore, Jiang Yifeng attaches great importance to the development of the Happy Twist team.

For this "Happy Comedians" program, Mahua FunAge sent two teams, Shen Teng and Wang Ning, to participate, to help them increase their exposure and build their reputation.

The company is producing three variety shows at the same time, so the variety show department is short-staffed.

That's why Wang Zhengyu made this request.

Jiang Yifeng nodded and said, "I can let you recruit some people, but the number must be controlled."

After all, it's not the norm for a company to produce three variety shows simultaneously; the manpower shortage is only temporary.

Sa Beining, who had been silent until now, suddenly said, "If it's just a temporary shortage of people, I can discuss with the station to send some colleagues over to help out and learn about the production process of reality shows."

Driven by Fengxing Media, variety reality shows have become wildly popular ahead of schedule, and Yangshi also wants to get involved.

Sa Beining's decision to seek employment was also based on this consideration.

Upon hearing Sa Beining's words, Jiang Yifeng replied, "There's no problem with our studies; we won't hide anything from you."

The production process of reality TV shows is no secret, and many talents from Fengxing Media's variety show department have been poached.

There's nothing to hide about this.

The key lies in the creativity and vision of the entire team.

Seeing that Wang Zhengyu had no other requests, Jiang Yifeng said, "You've finished stating your requests, now it's my turn to say mine."

My expectations aren't high; I just hope the second season gets at least three times the viewership of "Leisurely Holiday" and a website rating of at least 9 points.

Hearing this, not only Wang Zhengyu, but even Sa Beining was a little stunned.

Sa Beining looked at Wang Zhengyu and chimed in, "Leisurely Holiday has been quite popular since it started airing. It's been trending on at least thirty different searches so far, right?"

The show garnered over 100 million views per episode on iQiyi; achieving three times that is truly difficult.

Leisurely Holiday will premiere on July 1st.

It generated a lot of buzz after it started airing.

Topics such as "Huang Lei teaches you how to pick corn", "iQiyi's play data is inflated", "I'm not familiar with you guys", "Han Geng admits to stealing", and "the most awkward three minutes in variety show history" have frequently topped the Weibo hot search list.

Jiang Yifeng was quite surprised by this situation.

He originally thought that Huang Lei would take the opportunity to clear his name on the new show, at least pretend to be a good person.

I didn't expect the show to start with all sorts of drama and sensationalism.

Huang Lei not only continued to create innovative dishes, but also criticized the guests from the first episode, the "Top Combine" group, saying directly that he was not familiar with them.

While picking corn, he spouted a bunch of empty platitudes, which even He Jiong couldn't stand.

It can only be said that the first season of Back to Field had a great impact on Huang Lei and He Jiong.

Under the guidance of Fengxing Media, Huang Lei became an internet sensation with the nickname "Deadly Chef," and surprisingly, he gained a good reputation.

So Huang Lei went astray. He thought that the reason why "Back to Field" was so popular was because of the show's various pranks and the popularity generated by repeatedly hyping up scandalous material.

Even on leisurely holidays, Huang Lei continued to operate in the same way, and even went so far as to escalate the situation, causing even greater controversy.

This approach is indeed a form of path dependence.

Moreover, the iQiyi production team was also very happy.

They felt Huang Lei was very dedicated, so they focused more on drama in the editing and encouraged other guests to be authentic.

Han Geng got completely hooked.

He confessed on the show that he stole computers when he was in school, and he was very proud of it, thinking that he was awesome.

The show generated a lot of buzz after its first episode aired.

In addition, iQiyi inflated its viewership data, claiming that the show had surpassed 100 million views within 5 hours of its release.

This sparked widespread ridicule online, with people saying he didn't even bother to restrain himself from fabricating data.

Jiang Yifeng wiped his mouth and said, "We have internal data. The actual number of views for the first episode of Leisurely Holiday is currently around 2000 million."

This show has a bad reputation, so its viewership won't increase much in the future.

I'm not asking you to achieve three times the view count; this isn't a random goal.

The show generated a lot of buzz about a relaxing holiday, but it received very poor reviews.

After all, this is a slow-paced variety show, not a showdown between "Sisters Who Make Waves".

It's okay to occasionally create some entertainment value, but the main goal should be to slow down and make the show comfortable for everyone to watch.

Take, for example, the second season of "Divas Hit the Road," produced by Hunan TV. It was extremely dramatic and generated a huge amount of buzz.

The premiere episode garnered a 1.58% viewership rating, making it a resounding success from the start.

However, the ratings continued to decline afterward, and the online viewership was also poor.

The fifth season, "Silk Road Season," saw everyone maintain a stable mood, with no drama and only heartwarming moments, resulting in the best viewership and positive reviews.

This is the program's positioning.

Slow-paced variety shows that force themselves to be dramatic may generate temporary buzz, but they will lose their healing effect and lack staying power.

Moreover, the way Huang Lei and Han Geng acted has greatly damaged their respective images.

Although the two have been in the spotlight these past few days, they have also been subjected to a lot of criticism.

Under the guidance of Fengxing Media, many netizens have begun to boycott them.

But Huang Lei remained completely unperturbed.

He felt that this situation was similar to that of the first season of "Longing for Life" – initially criticized, but later redeemed, and its reputation would recover.

Little did they know that the situation was completely different; black traffic is not so easy to exploit, and there is a lot of knowledge involved.

Putting aside other things, in the first season of Longing for Life, Jiang Yifeng arranged for Meng Ziyi and Tian Qianwei to cause trouble for Huang Lei, making Huang Lei suffer a lot.

The chef who created the deadly dish was himself a victim.

This gave the audience a good impression of Huang Lei.

However, the effect of making a leisurely holiday too contrived, with the guest being Han Geng who steals things, and Huang Lei making "creative dishes" and lecturing, it's hard not to be disliked.

Moreover, Fengxing Media will not do nothing.

Besides taking advantage of the situation to make Huang Lei even more criticized, the company also prepared a lot of press releases.

Huang Lei's current public persona is that of a good father and a good husband.

Leaving aside his messy job as a teacher at the school, just his "fourth kind of relationship" with Liu Ruoying, which is "beyond family, love and friendship," is enough to ruin his current public image.

Hearing Jiang Yifeng say that, Wang Zhengyu breathed a sigh of relief.

After chatting for a while, everyone dispersed.

The next morning, Jiang Yifeng brought Jing Tian to the Mushroom House to begin recording the program.

Haotang Village is one of the first batch of "Beautiful Village" demonstration sites in the country. It not only boasts beautiful scenery and pleasant landscapes, but also has abundant agricultural resources, including fertile rice paddies and 2 mu of tea plantations, where the famous "Xinyang Maojian" tea is grown.

In addition, there are chestnut orchards, a national-level wild kiwifruit reserve, and abundant cash crops such as kudzu root, lotus root, and honey.

There are many tasks that can be done in the Mushroom House where you can film, such as planting rice, picking and processing tea, digging kudzu roots, and collecting honey.

So the production team changed the format. The people in the Mushroom House had to complete various farm work tasks to earn points, which could then be exchanged for daily necessities at the Mushroom House supermarket at the village entrance.

As guests in the first episode, Jiang Yifeng ordered braised chicken with chestnuts, while Jing Tian ordered "Gushi Goose Pieces," a famous dish from Xinyang.

Jia Bin and Jiang Yan are the younger members of the show. They do most of the work and don't talk much, but the Mushroom House is actually more lively than the previous season.

On the one hand, he is raising more and more small animals, and on the other hand, Sa Beining has a lively and boisterous personality.

He got along very well with Meng Ziyi and Tian Qianwei. The three of them chatted together, and with Qiao Shan as their straight man, it was very funny.

But Jiang Yifeng is even wilder.

After learning that there was kudzu on the mountain, he took Jing Tian up the mountain with him and picked up a bunch of kudzu vines, earning 5 points.

Everyone thought Jiang Yifeng was simply earning points, but they discovered that he picked up a machete, cut open the kudzu root, and was looking for kudzu worms inside.

These kudzu worms are plump and pale yellow in color. They don't look disgusting, but since they are worms, many people can't accept them.

Jing Tian kept her distance.

But when Jiang Yifeng deep-fried these insects until they were golden and translucent, with a fragrant aroma, and sprinkled with a little chili powder, they became an exquisite delicacy.

After the insects were taken out of the pot, everyone gathered around again.

Seeing Jiang Yifeng eating with great relish, Jing Tian asked curiously, "Is this really edible?"

Jiang Yifeng said, "It really is edible. This is the best-tasting insect. It's fragrant, crispy, and fresh, even better than bee pupae. It was my favorite food when I was a child."

Hearing this, Jing Tian swallowed hard. She mustered her courage and put a bug in her mouth.

Then his eyes lit up, and he couldn't stop, constantly popping it into his mouth.

Among Jiang Yifeng's harem, Jing Tian is probably the number one foodie.

(End of this chapter)