"Thank you all for your likes" "Now I will sing an original song of my own to my family." Recently, in a live broadcast room of less than 20 square meters in the Changde Song and Dance Theater, the theater's baritone Wen Chao was live broadcasting, skillfully interacting with fans.
Wenchao is a microcosm of the live broadcast room of Changde Song and Dance Theater.
From helplessness to proactive action, from individual operation to collective action, from randomization to normalization. Today, nearly 20 actors from the Changde Song and Dance Theater have performed live broadcasts and established their own live broadcast guild.
Why did a municipal hospital group start a live broadcast? How to grasp the live streaming traffic password? Recently, a reporter from Xiaoxiang Morning News visited the "Second Stage" open day of the Douyin live broadcast theater troupe and explored the story of Changde City Song and Dance Theater's successful creation of a "second stage" in the live broadcast room.
△ Actors from Changde Song and Dance Theater were preparing for the broadcast in the live broadcast room
Attempt: The first live broadcast had a "bad start"
"Please take out your mobile phones and immediately invite relatives and friends to follow our account." At the end of 2022, In the small theater of a training institution in Changde City, the first live broadcast of the Huimin performance carefully prepared by the Changde Song and Dance Theater is going on in an intense and orderly manner. The broadcast was about to start, but the urgent voice of Zhang Yan, deputy director of Changde Song and Dance Theater, was suddenly heard on the scene because the number of fans on the troupe's account had not yet reached the requirement for the broadcast.
"We thought the live broadcast was simple at that time." Zhang Yan recalled the live broadcast and said that the offline performance would not work online at all. The equipment for this live broadcast was cobbled together temporarily by friends in the same industry. The first live broadcast was launched in such a hasty situation. There was no usual applause, and fewer than a hundred people were watching online at the same time.
△ Zhang Yan, deputy director of Changde Song and Dance Theater, introduced the live broadcast situation of the troupe
Why do we need to do live broadcast? In fact, this is also the unknown difficulty of some academies at present.
Since the new century, literary and art academies across the country have transformed into enterprises and restructured, opening up a path to marketization. Changde City Song and Dance Theater actively promotes enterprise restructuring. Nearly half of the business personnel were separated from the original unit and transferred to the newly established company, Changde Xiangchu Song and Dance Theater Co., Ltd. This means that they will no longer receive full government funding from now on and must enter the market to fend for themselves.
Transformation will inevitably bring pain. With reduced financial allocations and a shrinking performance market, the local theater troupe in this third-tier town is facing considerable survival challenges. For ten years, Changde Song and Dance Theater relied mostly on government-purchased cultural performances for the benefit of the people, with 50 to 60 performances a year at a cost of several thousand yuan per performance.
In order to make money, the theater accepts commercial performances no matter how small, "survive in the cracks" of the market, and maintain team stability and basic operations. This immature live broadcast attempt was a helpless move.
At the end of 2022, due to the epidemic, offline performances cannot be performed, and the theater has more than ten performances to benefit the people that have not yet been completed. The number of performances is related to the evaluation of the troupe and the salary of the actors. The whole troupe is anxious. At that time, some art troupes were already performing in the live broadcast room, and Zhang Yan could occasionally see them on Douyin. She applied to her superiors to move the performances online, and she was quickly approved. After
's first live broadcast had a "bad start", Zhang Yan led everyone to review and adjust. Keeping viewers around is the core goal. The first is audience interaction. In order to clearly see the comments in the live broadcast room, the group bought a second-hand TV for screen projection. As a host, Zhang Yan can't just announce the curtain, she forces herself to learn, "Watch other people's live broadcasts every day, learn how to interact and communicate with the audience."
In this way, the Song and Dance Theater broadcast live for more than ten days, completing The performance task was completed, and the number of people online at the same time increased from dozens to more than a hundred. Many Changde people who work out of town saw the live broadcast and left messages saying that they felt very warm after seeing the performance in their hometown. What surprised Zhang Yan was that after seeing the live broadcast, neighboring fraternity groups came over and said that the live broadcast format was very novel and they also wanted to carry out online performances to expand the influence.
Exploring: First create a "benchmark"
's live test of the water caused some splash, but the live broadcast of the Changde Song and Dance Theater stopped for a while. The biggest problem is income, which cannot afford the cost of renting a venue every day.
Do you want to continue the live broadcast? How to do it? After some intense discussions, in March 2023, the theater decided to learn from the live broadcast experience of some fraternal theater groups and change the group broadcast to individual actor live broadcasts to create a "benchmark" first.
△The media visited Wenchao’s live broadcast room
Wenchao, who was born in the 1980s, became the “first person to eat crabs”. The group was equipped with sound engineers and assistants, and his personal account also changed from recording life to professional Vocal singing. Wenchao's live broadcast room was created in a "retro golden tunes" style - two red curtains hung on the wall, and a gramophone and old-fashioned lamp were placed in front of it.
At the beginning, Wen Chao didn't know how to interact with the audience. When someone asked a question, he would just answer it. Once there were no words on the screen, he became nervous and at a loss. Whenever there is a cold moment, the assistant will jump out to liven up the atmosphere and remind the host what topics to talk about with the audience. Slowly, Wenchao adapted to the live broadcast atmosphere. After the live broadcast room became more popular, he felt that his mentality was not so tense.
In order to let more people see Wenchao's live broadcast room, Zhang Yan forwards the live broadcast link to the group of college colleagues every day, calling on everyone to work together to like it. The group also contacted some local colleagues in Changde who do live broadcasts, some of which are singing performances, and some who are teaching singing. During the live broadcast, we connected the microphone together and guided each other's fans to pay attention.
Although he is a professional singer, Wenchao still feels nervous during live broadcasts. "Especially when you see the number of people slowly increasing, from thirty or forty to three or four hundred suddenly in one day, the psychological pressure is so great."
"It has exceeded a thousand! The number of viewers has exceeded a thousand!" One day in the live broadcast room of Wenchao, a staff member of the hospital troupe said to Zhang Yan on his mobile phone. Seeing that months of persistence had finally yielded obvious results, Zhang Yan was so excited that she almost screamed.
"I was a little bit reluctant at first, and I wasn't very good at interacting and getting likes." Wen Chao said that the traditional stage is completely different from the live broadcast. The live broadcast is like a mirror, it will reflect it to you very intuitively, not only It tests your personal professionalism, your on-the-spot response, your comprehensive knowledge reserve, and more importantly, your physical and mental endurance.
△Wen Chao sang passionately in the live broadcast room
The hard work paid off, and he explored step by step. Now, Wenchao and his colleagues in the academy have explored an effective live broadcast method. They set fixed live broadcast time periods to cultivate fans' user habits; they use exciting music to open the show to arouse the audience's emotions. At present, the number of fans of Wenchao's account has reached 76,000. When the data was at its best, there were 16,000 viewers online at the same time in the live broadcast room.
Beyond: Becoming a "guild institution" in the market
Wenchao account is a "test field" that carries the hopes of the whole group. How can
lead the entire hospital group to open the online traffic password under the example of Wenchao account?
"Hello, is this Director Zhang?"
In July 2023, Zhang Yan received a call from Douyin Live Operators, inviting Changde Song and Dance Theater to join the "Art Broadcasting Plan-Douyin Live Troupe Special Project".
"At that time, for the theater groups that settled in, we provided support policies such as guaranteed income, preferential sharing, traffic resources, and operation optimization." The person in charge of Douyin's live broadcast business said that this was jointly initiated by the China Performance Industry Association and Douyin Live. "Art Broadcasting Plan-Douyin Live Broadcasting Academy Special Project".
When Zhang Yan and her team were in trouble, a "timely rain" solved every problem she faced.
At that time, the development of individual actor accounts of the troupe was in a bottleneck period. It was difficult to maintain the traffic bonus of new accounts, and the sharing of reward income with actors was also a problem.
△Xiaomi performs in the live broadcast room
After communicating with the operators about the specific policies, Zhang Yan found that the traffic support and minimum subsidies provided by the platform were urgently needed by the "single-handed" academic groups.
Less than a month after the two parties contacted each other, Changde City Song and Dance Theater and Douyin Live reached a cooperation, established their own guild backend, and began to learn how to distribute reward income, how to manage live broadcast actors, etc.
With the platform’s policy support, Zhang Yan is full of energy and energy. The troupe opened four live broadcast rooms at once, providing venue equipment and scheduling for actors who did not have their own equipment. For actors who have just started broadcasting, the theater troupe provides support such as live broadcast planning, equipment debugging, and live broadcast review. Each anchor is equipped with a back-end support group to provide timely feedback on problems encountered during the broadcast.
After learning about the establishment of the guild, an actor who had worked in the Changde City Song and Dance Theater immediately contacted Zhang Yan and signed a contract to become the anchor of the guild. She said that she had been approached by guilds in the market before, but she just couldn't make up her mind, "I don't want to be a completely commercialized entertainment anchor." The brand of Changde Song and Dance Theater gave her a live broadcast position as a professional actor and also provided real help.
In December 2023, the year-end summary event of the "Art Broadcasting Plan-Douyin Live Broadcast Troupe Special" was held in Beijing. Changde Song and Dance Theater won four honors in one fell swoop, the troupe operation model, the top 10 popularity list, and Wenchao Personal Breakthrough Growth Award and Zhang Hua's top 10 personal popularity list. Wen Chao clearly remembered that among the actors who came on stage to receive the award, only he was from the municipal troupe, and the others were all from the national and provincial levels. At that moment, he thought, "It's pretty awesome. It's very encouraging to our unit, and I feel that my efforts have been rewarded."
△Changde City Song and Dance Theater participated in the year-end summary event of the "Art Broadcasting Plan-Douyin Live Broadcast Troupe Special Project"
"I am really flattered." Zhang Yan said happily that as the troupe's live broadcast influence on the Douyin platform continues to expand, she The circle of friends also extends from Changde to the whole country.
After the award ceremony, an actor from the Central Opera House in Changde took the initiative to find Zhang Yan and asked her about the live broadcast experience and practices of the theater troupe. He said that the song and dance theater in his hometown did a good job in live broadcasting. Zhang Yan was pleasantly surprised, "This It may not be called overtaking in a corner, but through live broadcast, it is not easy for our grassroots academies to achieve a little bit and still be seen. "
" We hope to lead professional local arts academies. Go to new stages, new audiences, and new income, so that actors are no longer limited to private traffic," said the person in charge of Douyin's live broadcast business. As of July 2024, 192 troupes and 2,174 actors have joined the "Art Broadcasting Plan-Douyin Live Broadcast Troupe Special Project".
△Changde City Song and Dance Theater Instrumental Music Live Broadcast Room
Currently, the Changde City Song and Dance Theater Association has signed 17 anchors, most of whom are actors outside the theater troupe. The cumulative live broadcast income of the institute has exceeded 300,000 yuan, and the highest monthly income of a single anchor has reached 60,000 to 70,000 yuan.
Facing the future, how to make live broadcasting sustainable and sustainable? Zhang Yan is full of confidence. She said: "I hope to expand the influence of the live broadcast team by creating a benchmark account, create more positive hot topics, and let professional and talented 'Internet celebrities' endorse the cultural tourism promotion in their hometown. With the help of 'art Dongfeng Broadcast Project-Douyin Live Broadcast Group specializes in creating an artistic "Internet celebrity Changde" city IP, so that more people can know, understand and like the city they live in. "
Xiaoxiang Morning News reporter Chen Zhangshu and photographer Xiao Tianjian.
