The straight man in the entertainment circle

The recording of this episode of "The Masked Singer" is about to begin, and chief director Yu Hui is checking the preparations of various departments.

Recently, the ratings of "The Masked Singer" have dropped again, and it has almost become the show with the lowest budget and lowest ratings on the channel. The staff of the program have lost the fighting spirit they had at the beginning these days, and they are all a little slack.

Yuhui couldn't say anything, because even he was a little discouraged.

As Yu Hui was walking, seven or eight people suddenly came over. They walked up to Yu Hui with shameful expressions on their faces.

"Director Yu..."

Yu Hui glanced at them and realized that there were setters, lights, and directors inside.

"Huh? Is there something wrong?"

The few people looked at each other for a few times and then came out with a leader.

"Director Yu, it's like this. The program team next door is running a new show and is short of people. They want us to come over. The few of us who want our show... seem... don't seem to be able to hire so many people, so..."

Yuhui understood that the benefits of employees in the TV station were related to the programs they were responsible for. If the ratings of the program were good, the employees would get more bonuses and they would speak louder on the station. Similarly, if the ratings of the program were not good, then the program team would People who don’t have much money or status, it’s very difficult to go to other program groups to negotiate some things, it depends on people’s faces.

Snobbery among various program groups is very common. Yuhui's program is no longer good. It is human nature for some people to want to develop their careers elsewhere. After all, these people are not Yuhui's own team.

"Okay, after this episode is recorded, if you want to leave, I'll let you go." Yu Hui said.

"Thank you, director!" Those people bowed to Yu Hui to express their thanks.

Yu Hui felt mixed and went to the surveillance office. As soon as he went in and sat down, producer Fang Minghua came.

"Director Yu..." Fang Minghua said hesitantly.

"What's wrong?"

"Um...the budget for the next period has been applied for by Taili."

Sunset asked, "How much?"

"3...3 million, I...I really tried my best..."

Yu Hui frowned, excluding the 500,000 program production fee, the seven singers, Luo Fei and Lin Li each cost 800,000, Huang Haining 300,000, Hu Junfeng 200,000, the two new guests 150,000, Jiang Mengyao is cheaper, 10 10,000 appearance fees.

This adds up to 3 million, not counting the seven people on the judging panel.

There are two in the guessing team who are the hosts of the station, so the fee can be ignored. Although the appearance fees of other members of the guessing team add up to the cost of one person, Lin Li, but because of this, the expenses of the guessing team cannot be helped. Squeeze it out again.

With such a lineup, one episode of the program, no matter how to save costs, cannot be less than 3.5 million.

Now the station only gives 3 million for the next episode, which is a difference of 500,000. This means that according to the current program lineup, there will basically be no production fee for the next episode.

Yuhui and others were silent. Everyone felt a little disappointed, but they were not surprised by the result.

At the beginning of the establishment of each program, the station will have a budget, and then the amount will be divided equally into each episode. If the program is popular, countless sponsors will add additional advertisements, and the station's budget for the program will also increase. But if the program does not work, Budgets will also gradually shrink.

The original budget for "The Masked Singer" was 4 million per episode. As ratings continued to decline, the program's budget also began to shrink.

The previous program budgets of 3.5 million yuan were applied for by Chief Director Yu Hui and Producer Fang Minghua after they went through great lengths to guarantee the budget from the station director.

This time, Taiwan’s leaders seemed to have lost patience and were only willing to give a budget of 3 million yuan.

Now that the station's budget has been reduced so much, the signal is very obvious, and it's almost time to tell the station to give up this program.

With a gap of half a million, the only way is to change the lineup, cut off the players with high appearance fees, and replace them with someone with low appearance fees.

This is also Taili's idea.

The station's idea was to hire some low-profile celebrities to wrap up the show.

Luo Fei has signed for three episodes of the show, which means he will definitely be there for the next episode.

Among them, Luo Fei and Lin Li had high appearance fees. Luo Fei couldn't move, so he had to move Lin Li.

At this time, the program's budget was drastically reduced. If the program wanted to continue, it had to go the route of a popular singer. Lin Li could no longer afford to hire a quasi-first-line singer.

When Lin Li first talked with Yu Hui, he didn't sign a contract for many terms. Instead, he asked Yu Hui not to reveal his information and to perform a real masked singing to let people guess. If the guessing team guessed him correctly, he would leave. If the people in the group can't guess, they will continue.

Yu Hui originally hoped to keep the secret together with Lin Li to see the effect, but now that the program budget is like this, it seems that it can't be kept.

If the people in the judging panel can guess Lin Li today, then they won't say anything and just take advantage of the situation and let Lin Li leave.

If the guessers couldn't guess that it was Lin Li, Yu Hui also decided to tell the guessers the result through the headset at the last moment and let them announce it.

In short, Lin Li can only participate in this issue.

Although Yu Hui was unwilling to give up, he had received a lot of criticism from the station director in the previous episodes and had made many promises. As a result, the program had no improvement and he had no shame to fight for anything with the station director anymore.

Yu Hui looked at the others and asked, "Lin...uh...um...are all the guests here?"

"We're all here, we can record now."

"Um."

Yuhui walked out of the control room and walked to Lin Li's lounge.

He also wanted to catch his breath.

Lin Li was sitting in the lounge and soon heard a knock on the door.

"Dong dong dong."

Lin Li has been in a good mood since getting off the car.

For Lin Li, participating in this show and hiding it from everyone on stage was only half the battle. He had to hide it both on and off stage, that would be true success.

"Please come in." Lin Li said in a stern voice.

Yu Hui pushed open the door and entered, but when he saw Lin Libai's Wuchang appearance, he was immediately dumbfounded.

He didn't know what image Lin Li would appear in today.

Yuhui stopped at the door and looked at Lin Li.

Lin Li saw that it was Yu Hui alone, so he stopped hiding and said in his own voice: "Director Yu Hui, please come in."

When Yu Hui saw such a cold and gloomy beauty in front of her, she made a lot of noises, and her whole body felt bad, but she still didn't come in.

"Please close the door."

Lin Li smiled when he saw Yu Hui didn't move.

Only then did Yu Hui react. Feeling a little embarrassed about his gaffe, he walked in and closed the door, but his eyes still did not leave Lin Li.

"Is something wrong?" Lin Li asked.

Yu Hui didn't answer, but smiled and said: "How did you do it? If you didn't speak, I wouldn't believe it was you even if I beat you to death."

Lin Li changed his voice and said in a loud voice: "How do you talk like this?"

Yu Hui's expression froze, and he couldn't help but look around, and found that Lin Li was the only one here. Only then did he realize that he had knocked on the door just now, and the voice that came from inside was also a woman's.

At that time, Yuhui thought it was Lin Li's manager, but now it seems that this is the voice Lin Li made!

Lin Li can actually make a woman's voice!

The world is full of wonders, and there are still some people who can pretend to be real by pretending to be women or men, but at the same time, they are very rare and rare. In the entertainment industry, Yu Hui has never heard of people who can do these two things.

But someone appeared in front of him. This person was a well-known straight man in the entertainment industry. No one would believe it if he told him.

Yu Hui was extremely excited at the moment. He was right in front of Lin Li and couldn't believe it all, let alone the audience at the scene and in front of the TV who didn't know the inside story at all!

Yuhui's mind surged for a moment, and he suddenly understood why Lin Li had set so many rules with him. Lin Li was about to stage the most incredible scene in the history of Chinese variety shows!

This is to make all the viewers happy in front of the TV!

And this is the purpose of this program!

There is no other program that can fool all the viewers like this one, which is the most successful thing!

Yu Hui changed his mind in an instant. He couldn't tell Lin Li's identity today. Even if the budget for the next period was not enough, even if he broke the contract and asked the guessing team to tell Luo Fei, he couldn't take the initiative to tell Lin Li's identity!

Because Lin Li is the only hope for this show to turn around!

Lin Li saw that Yu Hui was wandering away from the world again, so he waved his hand in front of Yu Hui.

Only then did Yuhui come to his senses again, smiled apologetically, and said, "What's wrong?"

"I'm asking you." Lin Li said.

"Oh, yes, that...everyone on our show must have a code name. What is your code name? Do you have any ideas?" Yu Hui was still excited.

The codenames of the show's guests were originally determined together with their looks, but Lin Li was special. He made his own look, so the program team naturally didn't decide on his codename, so Yu Hui came to ask about it.

Lin Li asked: "What do you think is a better code name for my look?"

Yu Hui glanced at Lin Li and said with a smile: "If you really want to hear it, I really have it, why don't you just call Qing Ben Jia Nai He a thief!"

Lin Li heard something in his words, as if he was a good woman, so why should she be a man?

Lin Li smiled and said, "Yes, it seems you still have to get it yourself."

"Have you thought about it?"

"Of course, for my image, the codename is: Others cost money to sing, but I will die if I sing."

Yu Hui was stunned for a moment, then laughed and said: "Okay, this code name is good, then let's call it this code name, I will inform you."

There was a live signal connected to the studio in the lounge. Not long after Yuhui left, the big screen in the lounge lit up.

The studio audience begins to arrive.

The studio of "The Masked Singer" has 500 auditoriums, but Lin Li found that the auditorium was not full, and several rows in the back were empty.

For ordinary people, no one will refuse anyone who can go to a TV station to participate in program recording.

However, the live audience of this show is also dissatisfied, which shows how low the attraction of this show is to the audience.

After more than ten minutes, the audience's admission was over, and the on-site director began to invite the seven members of the guessing team to appear.

Lin Li knew two of them, one was Cai Wenli and the other was Sun Yunhan.

Others include Liu Gang, Xu Zhenchun, and Hong Jianping. Sitting at the far end of the back row are Zhang Xiao and Cheng Qinghong, two young hosts of Lychee Channel.

I guess the seven members of the judging panel are either outdated singers but have a good sense of variety shows, or they are newcomers who have just debuted. In short, the appearance fee is not expensive.

Only Xu Zhenchun, who sits in the C seat, has a higher appearance fee because he hosted a first-line variety show when he was 20 years old, but it is only 300,000.

The seven judges sat down, and the on-site director took a loudspeaker and shouted: "The scene is quiet, we will start recording right away. Let's record the material first, and start with applause. Everyone please cooperate. I call three two one, and everyone applauds together." …”

The applause, laughter and some scenes of intoxication and shock were recorded live.

Many programs will record material in advance for use in final editing, and many viewers who are participating in the recording of the program for the first time are very cooperative.

The recording ended a few minutes later, and the on-site director shouted: "Okay, thank you for your cooperation. The recording will start immediately. All departments are ready, three two one, start!"

The music started, and the host Li Hao came out with the music and lights.

The audience and the people who guessed the judging team applauded one after another. Li Hao is the first brother of Litchi Channel. He moved from Mango Channel seven years ago. He was also the focus of training on Mango Channel at the beginning. However, Li Hao saw Liang Sheng and Xu Zhe. Two big mountains, knowing that it is difficult for me to have the opportunity to take the lead alone, so I decided to change jobs to Lychee Terrace.

Although he has not hosted any popular variety shows in recent years, his hosting skills are still obvious to all.

Especially for the New Year's Eve party, Lychee TV took the lead in organizing a poetry recitation program for the rescue team of the Moth Mountain Fire. It was also Li Hao who proposed and led the recitation. Therefore, although Li Hao's popularity is much lower than that of people like Liang Sheng and Xu Zhe, , but the reputation is still very good.

"Good evening, audience friends, and welcome to "The Masked Singer" jointly produced by Lychee TV and Xingcan Productions!"

Li Hao's clear and sonorous voice echoed.

There was a round of applause.

Li Hao paused for a while and then said with emotion: "Today is the ninth issue. Today, we have three new people. But let me break the news for you first. Among these three people, one Even I don’t know who it is.”

After Li Hao finished speaking, someone in the judging panel shouted: "We don't know either."

Many people in the audience cheered up and were full of curiosity after hearing this, but many viewers also reacted.

As the host, it's normal for Li Hao to know the true identity of the new guests in each episode. You guess the judging panel is here to guess the guest singers. Isn't that right?

Why do you say it as if he is also very strange?

The people on the judging panel said they didn’t know who one of the newcomers was. Doesn’t this obviously admit that they knew who the other two were?

If everyone had guessed before that the judging panel already knew who the guest singer was, then this sentence can obviously be used as evidence!

The audience at the scene thought that no wonder this show was not good. They guessed that it would be better if the judges hired some professional actors.

However, the casual remarks were more believable. Everyone suddenly lost interest in the others and were full of expectations for the newcomer whose identity neither the host nor the judging panel knew.

When Li Hao heard someone from the judging panel say this, his heart trembled, and he thought to himself that it was really cheap but not a good product!

Li Hao was busy attracting everyone's attention and continued: "This newcomer can be said to be the most mysterious guest in the history of our program. He came to our program group alone without an agent, and the way he arrived was very special. I won’t talk about it for now, but I’ll give it a try. You’ll see it later. I believe this will be the first time you see this unique way of appearing.”

Li Hao's words really made the audience even more curious. Even the people who guessed the judging panel looked very curious.

Li Hao himself was also very curious about the newcomer who appeared tonight. Seeing that he had already exaggerated it, he stopped talking.

Li Hao was afraid that when the mysterious guest came out, people would guess him every minute, which would be embarrassing.

So, stop there.

Li Hao looked at the expectant eyes of the audience and thought to himself:

Hopefully this new guy deserves to be so mysterious.