The time has come to December, and the variety show train in 2023 has come to an end. From "Hahahaha 3" at the beginning of the year, to the summer file "Happy Adult", "Jumping into the Geography Book Trip", "Tent Business" and many "friends" gathered, and then "Happy Friends" continued at the end of the year. "Friend +" has become an unavoidable keyword in this year's variety show section. Multiple elements such as travel, competition, education, and ** have poured into the "Acquaintance Bureau", and "Pengzong" is moving towards a broader world, and a number of content IPs such as "Mao Xuewang" and reemployment men's groups have also come into being. Under the fierce market competition, why can the content model of "acquaintance social" be an "independent portal"?How does the theme of "Acquaintance Bureau" respond to people's emotional demand for variety shows?In the face of the finite nature of native resources, how will the "acquaintance bureau" break the game?Situation, emotion, emotionThe content utopia of PengzongCompared with traditional game and competitive variety shows, emotion is the most important theme of "Pengzong". From the scenes of daily life, the topics that go to the heart, to the design of game links close to life, etc., are the key factors for "Pengzong" to highlight emotions. In order to restore the real mode of daily relationship between friends, most of the "Peng Zong" usually set the shooting location in a first-class living field. Whether it is the small living room in "Mao Xuewang" or the small country villa tailored for the 6 guests by the "Happy Friends" program team, from the living room, kitchen to the most private bedroom space, it has been transformed into a filming venue, and the most ordinary details of life have become the "electronic mustard" for the audience to eat. In the sixth episode of "Happy Friends", Zhang Yuan and Land Rover, the two "intelligence-reduction" brothers, talked about the topic of death in a closed dark space, which was called a "god" scene in the show by netizens in the barrage. Getting rid of the coat of entertainment, old friends who have known each other for more than ten years sit quietly in the room, talking about death, and the emotional attributes of "Peng Zong" also gushed out at this moment. 
When similar variety shows focus on social observation and variety show effects, "Peng Zong" is based on real scenes, and uses the trust and tacit understanding between old friends as the narrative tone to achieve iterative upgrading of content. The reproduction of social topics and the response to the emotional needs of the audience have become the boosters for "Pengzong" to get out of the circle. Also in the documentary variety show "Happy Adult" broadcast this summer, Wang Jingxuan said to Shen Yue: "When people fall from the sky when they are born, they will be stained with a lot of starlight, and some people's starlight falls on their backs and they can't see it." So every step Shen Yue takes forward, I can see the shining point behind you, but you can't see it yourself. Hit the audience's heart, and it has also become a classic quotation for the show to go out of the circle. The intimacy shown in the "acquaintance bureau" is a scarce resource in a fast-paced modern society. When real life is difficult to satisfy people's desire for intimacy, "Pengzong" has become a tool to heal itself to a certain extent. 
In addition, travel genres such as "The Long-awaited Holiday", "Let's Go Now" and "Travelogue" are also very popular this year. This kind of variety show presents the scenery and new things experienced by artists and friends on the way to the screen in an entertaining way, so that the audience who is limited by real life and cannot go far can also get short-term spiritual pleasure in the process of ** variety show.
Native-basedIn-depth excavation of artist IP resourcesAs a type of program focusing on socializing, the program content of "Peng Zong" is highly dependent on the artist's own original characteristics and social relationships, and the artist's personality, image, and social circle are all factors that affect the direction of the program. Mango TV's official announcement of the "Artist IP Full-Link New Variety Show" at the 2024 China Merchants Conference can be said to be a new sample of the current cooperation model between platforms and artists. On the one hand, based on the artist's own characteristics and original relationship, the artist becomes the co-creator of variety show content, and deeply excavates the attributes and value of the artist's variety show. On the other hand, the successful shaping of artist IP will also become a new channel for the platform to retain audiences and attract new members, and the artist and the platform will become an interactive and symbiotic community. Compared with the previous high-investment and high-risk variety show production model, the model of in-depth integration of artists and platforms may become a more cost-effective choice. 
Since "Welcome to the Mushroom House" made the 0713 reemployment men's group popular, the reemployment men's group and the Mango Channel label have been reactivated from the talent show more than ten years ago. Although in the pilot film of "Happy Friends", the program team threw out the content of hitting the KPI target to the guests, which attracted a lot of complaints, but many netizens still said that they wanted to rush for the annual membership for the career of the old brothers. A similar situation can also be glimpsed in Tencent's variety show map this year. After the first taste of the sweetness of "Mao Xuewang", Tencent continued to launch Xiao Xianzong "Expand and Talk" with Yi Lijing, Yang Tianzhen, Yang Li, and Fu Seoul as the main line, further continuing the production model of "artist + content". The theme concept of "Old Friends" proposed by Tencent at the beginning of this year is also expected to achieve new breakthroughs in attracting new members and consolidating users, and enhance the stickiness between users and platforms through IP cooperation with Old Friends. Although iQiyi, Youku and other platforms do not use "Acquaintance Bureau" as the main content of variety shows, judging from their official annual film lists, "Tent is in Business", "Departure to the Mountains and Seas", "Be Happy!".There is also no shortage of narratives about friendship lines in programs such as "Twist". 
In addition, looking back at the list of variety shows that have been broadcast, including Hu Xianxu and Xin Zhilei in "Flowers and Teenagers 5", Qin Hailu's "kinship", Yang Zi and Zhang Yishan's "love and kill" in "High Energy Youth League", etc., variety shows that do not focus on acquaintance socialization also contain marketing of the artist's original relationship, and the charm of "Acquaintance Bureau" can also be seen. On the other hand, although the mode of developing content settings with artists as the main body can tap the value of artists' variety shows to a greater extent, how to grasp the balance between program openness and program quality has also become a problem that the program team needs to think about. After the broadcast of two feature films of "Happy Friends", the show was criticized in the game planning process, and was evaluated by netizens as "boring" and "no memory points". Build a bird's nest, health exercises, and make pies. Although these contents were voted by the guests, the completely self-service content model also made it more difficult to grasp the effect of the show. 
Perhaps "Happy Restart" is a treasure in the domestic "Pengzong" section, but the replication of the model is not easy, even if it is its twin brother. Cutout subdivisionMore IPs enter the traffic poolThrough the combing of the current "Pengzong" market, it can be found that its themes and subjects are in a state of vertical segmentation.
In terms of program themes, travel, scenes, and topics are the most common themes of the current "Pengzong". The travel category includes Shen Teng and his friends' "Let's Go Now", Zhang Bichen and Zhao Liying's girlfriend's exotic sojourn variety show "Long-awaited Vacation", "Traveling by Jumping Geography Book" that combines travel and research, and Station B's customized travel variety show "Phoenix Legend's Customized Variety Show", etc. The scene category includes "Happy Friends", "Happy Departure Again", and "Fifty Kilometers of Taohuawu 3", which show the daily life of artists and friends in specific scenes;The topic category is mainly represented by "Mao Xuewang" and "Expand and Talk", with the fixed guests of the program as the host, and start a dialogue on a certain topic in the built ** life scene. 
It is worth noting that in the post-epidemic era, the travel category "Peng Zong" has shown a sudden emergence in the market, and "acquaintance travel" has become the first choice for variety show content on many platforms. The list of variety shows to be broadcast in the second half of 2023 announced by Tencent alone includes "Let's Go Now 2", "Long-awaited Holiday", "A Bit Interesting Yard", and "Hahahahaha 4", four travel variety shows that revolve around the original relationship of artists. 
In addition to the layout of the "Pengzong" market, the two "Pengzong" of the short ** platform Douyin "Let's Go, the Road is Life" and "Di Yi Sichuan Travel Diary" have also been put on the agenda. A number of satellite TVs have also entered the game one after another, including Dragon TV's broadcast of the documentary public welfare "Peng Zong" "All the Way Forward" co-sponsored by Hu Ge and his friends Liu Tao and Chen Long, and Zhejiang Satellite TV's "Travel 2" with the theme of Jay Chou and old friends' group tour. In addition, CCTV Variety Channel has "Hello Life 4" with Sa Beining, Nigmaiti, Ren Luyu and other main station hosts as guests. 
It can be said that the "Peng Zong" created around the social networking of acquaintances has become a hot content model in the current variety show market. However, with the continuous recruitment and growth of the market, how to solve the limited nature of native resources and the long-term development of IP by the "acquaintance bureau" that rejects the social "hodgepodge" has also become an important issue to be solved. Under the fierce competition, it is difficult for us to judge where the future of "Pengzong" will go. But the only thing that can be determined is that the attention to social issues, the reflection and reconciliation of social emotions, the reproduction of social group memories, and the reproduction of social life must be the audience's constant judgment criteria for good variety shows.