The Spring Festival Gala sponsorship of TikTok and Huoshan Video has been withdrawn. Will short videos follow in the footsteps of hip-hop?

What is coming will come, whether it is during the Spring Festival or during normal working hours, the policy will not leave anyone a chance to prepare.

Starting from this morning, the online versions of the Spring Festival Gala of many satellite TV stations, including Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Oriental, have shown varying degrees of mosaic problems. Covered up are the logos of short video companies such as Huoshan Video and Douyin, which had previously won the naming rights. They were replaced by the selfie APP Jimeng.

This means that the TV station's Spring Festival Gala had to temporarily change its title sponsor, and the previously highly-watched short video sponsors such as Volcano Video and Douyin were banned without any preparation.

As for the reason for the replacement, it was most likely because Li Tianyou, China's number one rap singer, was criticized by CCTV's "Focus Interview" because his lyrics contained illegal content, and was subsequently banned from the entire Internet.

Volcano Video is the platform where Li Tianyou broadcasts live, so it is reasonable for it to be implicated, but no one expected it to be so sudden and temporarily removed from the shelves during the Spring Festival, catching many satellite TV Spring Festival Galas off guard and forcing them to hastily use mosaics to respond.

The consequences are far more serious than imagined.

Removing TikTok means expanding the intensity of punishment. The policy has already raised the knife to the short video industry and started to clean up the vulgar content that has grown during its wild growth. No one can escape this disaster.

Kuaishou, which is in the process of IPO, and Douyin and Huoshan Video, which are at their peak, can only pray that this wave of rectification will not spread to a very deep level, and will not uproot the short video industry like it did to hip-hop culture.

Huoshan short video and Douyin were removed, and Jimeng came to the rescue

The short video industry should have been a shining force in this year's Spring Festival Gala on satellite TV, but it unexpectedly fell silent before the temporary broadcast.

Judging from the deployment of various Spring Festival Galas before, although short videos such as Volcano Video and Kuaishou cannot occupy the stage of CCTV Spring Festival Gala, they occupy the prime time of advertising in the Oriental, Zhejiang and Jiangsu Galas.

Among them, Huoshan Video was the most generous, sponsoring two New Year's Eve parties, Oriental TV and Jiangsu TV, while Douyin sponsored Zhejiang Satellite TV's Spring Festival Gala. As these two software are short video apps under Toutiao, some people jokingly said that "Toutiao has occupied the satellite TV Spring Festival Gala."

However, what no one expected was that the short video sponsors of these four satellite TV stations were temporarily replaced. Judging from the Zhejiang Satellite TV and Dragon TV that have already aired, the sponsors were temporarily changed to the selfie camera APP Ji Meng; and the sponsor of the Jiangsu Satellite TV Spring Festival Gala to be broadcast tonight has also become Ji Meng.

As the incident happened too suddenly, some local satellite TV stations that had already aired the Spring Festival Gala were completely unprepared, especially Zhejiang Satellite TV. In order to cover up the exposed TikTok logo that had already been sponsored, almost the entire program was mosaiced, which seriously affected the aesthetic of the program and greatly reduced the so-called carefully designed stage design.

For example, in the opening dance clip below, you can see that the images on both sides of the stage are blurred, which greatly affects the viewing experience. When the camera zooms in, you can vaguely see that what is blurred is the TikTok logo, which is in line with the general requirements for brand exposure of sponsors, that is, placing the sponsor logo on both sides of the stage.

But what's interesting is that, although both are blocked, Jiangsu Satellite TV's post-production technology is obviously better than Zhejiang Satellite TV's. This can be clearly shown in these two comparison pictures. In the former picture, Zhejiang Satellite TV's Hua Shao's microphone sign has turned black, and the area has also expanded a lot, which looks a bit fake at first glance; while Dragon TV's mask is red, which is relatively more in line with the festive atmosphere of the Spring Festival.

Kuaishou Huoshan Short Video and other companies are crazy about sponsoring variety shows, growing wildly

Short video companies sponsoring large-scale evening parties or variety shows has been a prominent phenomenon in recent years.

As the short video industry is still in the stage of competing for users, the competition between the two major sponsors, Kuaishou and Volcano Video, has entered a white-hot stage. Therefore, these wealthy companies are willing to invest heavily in the variety show industry at all costs, from the fifth season of the national variety show "Running Man" to "Where Are We Going, Dad", to new online variety shows such as "Tucao Conference" and "The Next Generation of Stars", which can be said to have fully occupied the industry.

The ways of intervention are also varied. For example, when Kuaishou was broadcasting "Running Man", it was spoken word with brand LOGO and subtitles; and Huoshan Video used prompt boards and screen bars in "Go Fighting 3"; and Douyin bought the rights of sponsor spoken word, subtitled songs and advertising songs in "The Rap of China" for 25 million yuan.

Popular variety shows are big consumers of traffic and have a huge influence on the entire population. Therefore, short video producers release variety shows in large quantities partly for the purpose of gaining traffic and partly for the need to upgrade their brands. The requirements for the release are also simple and crude: only buy the best and there is no upper limit on the budget.

Large-scale evening parties in popular variety shows are the top priority for all companies to compete for.

In the New Year’s Eve parties of major satellite TV stations in 2018, Kuaishou sponsored Zhejiang Satellite TV’s New Year’s Eve party, Huoshan Video sponsored Hunan Satellite TV, and sponsored Dragon TV and Jiangsu Satellite TV’s New Year’s Eve parties; while Douyin sponsored Jiangsu Satellite TV’s New Year’s Eve party, forming a climax of short video sponsorship.

So the question is, why was there no problem with sponsoring the satellite TV New Year’s Eve Gala, but the sponsorship of the satellite TV Spring Festival Gala was temporarily replaced?

Criticized by CCTV's "Focus Interview", has Tianyou harmed the short video industry?

To answer the question raised above, we need to go back to MC Tianyou.

A few days before the Spring Festival, relevant departments jointly convened a meeting of leading live broadcast platforms in Beijing overnight, among which they demanded that anchors such as Mc Tianyou and Wu Wu Kai be banned from broadcasting. In addition, the banned anchors were not only unable to broadcast live on major platforms, but their short videos were also blocked.

Later, a rap video of MC Tianyou on a live broadcast platform was exposed in the "Focus Interview" program. In the video, he praised methamphetamine, and the lyrics were full of vulgar words such as "Meth, you are so good, I want to have XX after taking it..."

Li Tianyou, who has changed his name several times on Weibo, ultimately could not escape the fate of being punished. The labels such as "shouting rap" and "vulgar" branded on him made him famous overnight, but also banned him overnight. From then on, there will be no Mc Tianyou on public platforms, and the so-called rap culture will also be banned.

Because MC Tianyou became popular on Kuaishou short videos in his early years and accumulated tens of millions of fans, and was poached by Huoshan Video for 20 million yuan in 2017, when something happened to Li Tianyou, Huoshan Video, as a live broadcast platform, and Kuaishou, which incubated the rap culture, were naturally implicated.

But I didn't expect the punishment to come so quickly and involve such a large number of people.

Among the sponsors that were urgently removed this time, Douyin had no connection with either Li Tianyou or Wu Wu Kai, but they still could not escape punishment. This is enough to show that the target of this crackdown is not just Kuaishou or Volcano Video, but the entire short video industry.

How familiar this scene seems.

Previously, hip-hop singer PG One was not only criticized by the public for the overnight scandal, but his lyrics contained various issues such as insulting women and instigating young people to take drugs, which were criticized by the official media of the Communist Youth League, eventually brewing into a hot social event.

Influenced by this incident, the once highly sought-after hip-hop culture was completely banned, and the entire hip-hop industry chain disappeared from the business landscape; Weibo hot searches were also taken off the shelves for a week due to poor public opinion management in this incident, resulting in heavy losses.

A singer ruined the entire hip-hop industry and ruined the bright future of countless people. Now, considering the development path of Li Tianyou and short videos, the short video industry is in danger.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.