(Yicai Global) June 26 -- The finale of Produce 101, China's most popular girls' talent show this summer, aired this past weekend. Over the past two months, 101 performers have undergone various challenges, training, and assessments, eventually being whittled down to 11 winners selected to form Rocket Girls 101, a new idol group, and start their career in entertainment.

Earlier this year, the male version of the show, Idol Producer, also came to prominence, posting a staggering 3 billion views in total, including 250 million for a single episode.

"These recent shows have magnified their commercial value", said Chen Yuetian, a partner at investment fund Sea of Stars Capital during an interview with CBNweekly. Sea of Stars Capital is an investor in idol agencies Mavericks Entertainment and Op-Media.

In the spring of 2018, the immense influence created by these two TV programs brought a host of star agency companies to the fore.

During an interview with CBNweekly, Oriental Awaken Agency Chief Executive Ji Xiang said that he had worked till 4 a.m. the previous day, meeting with investors from several of China's top investment institutions.

"Too many funds came to us, we've got too much attention," he said.

Ji Xiang is a well-known veteran of the industry in China. Over his career, he has enthusiastically explored the "idol agency" segment.

Singer Lee Soo Man founded SM Entertainment in South Korea in 1989, which later became the most important idol creation factory in the country. Many idol groups familiar to Chinese fans, such as Shinhwa, TVXQ, Super Junior, and EXO, were produced by SM Entertainment. Another South Korean idol creation factory YG Entertainment, founded by celebrity Yang Hyun Suk, is best known for producing idol group BigBang.

Since 2013, Chinese entertainers Lu Han and Kris Wu returned to China after receiving training at SM Entertainment. They quickly became model idols in China.

Compared with stars trained in the South Korean entertainment system, China's home-grown celebrities are far less influential. Apart from the popular teen idol group TFBOYS, produced by Beijing Times Fengjun Culture Art Development, the Chinese market hasn't seen any new idols for the past five years.

Mavericks Entertainment CEO Wang Cong told CBNweekly, "There is a shortage of new idols in the market, which is why I'm running an idol agency company. However good TFBOYS may be, people always tend to go for new idols and can get tired of old ones."

Many interviewees mentioned the political climate as a factor that cannot be ignored. Due to the tension between the two countries, South Korean idol groups have paid far fewer visits to China than before leaving space in the market. This situation has brought new opportunities for China's domestic idol economy. However, the question remains, will this be just a repeat of China's previous model used for creating idols? Or, will China finally create a new industrialized system for producing such stars?

Contestants Really Matter

In essence, both Idol Producer and Produce 101 are talent shows.

Produce 101 is derived from a South Korean show of the same name, which has long been popular in the country. Similar to when the first season of "The Voice of China" arrived in China, the show's setup can be easily copied. Produce 101 has different degrees of improvement compared to previous talent shows, whether it is in terms of production, narration, competition rules or contestant selection.

The level of program production is an important factor on the one hand, but contestants are even more important in determining a show's success. People who have watched Idol Producer and Produce 101 will find that most of the participants are already signed to agencies and some of them even have made their debuts on the big stage. Therefore, compared to contestants with no experience, they are obviously more experienced and more capable.

Before Idol Producer and Produce 101 were launched, Dragon TV, Hunan TV, and other stations had launched shows in previous years, but the programs were not as well received as expected. At that time, idol industry insiders said that the lack of a large number of contestants was a key factor.

China's talent show market is now 14 years old, but China still lacks a system that can support such programs. Compared to contestants on Super Girl in 2004, The Voice of China in 2012 and other such shows, Idol Producer and Produce 101 are different in that the artist agencies can participate in the packaging of the program so their would-be stars can generate more attention.

More than 80 agencies took part in the early works for Idol Producer, and those involved in Produce 101 spiraled into hundreds. These firms have become an important part of the entire talent show system.

Some agencies are even involved in both Idol Producer and PRODUCE 101 at the same time, aiming to become the industry leaders. However, most of these companies have only existed for two to three years and suffer from a lack of talent in their roster.

In contrast, Yuehua Entertainment has been in the business for 7 years and has even sent Chinese artists to South Korea for training. The Beijing-based agency has achieved fruitful results in both Idol Producer and Produce 101 with firm's choreographer Cheng Xiao working on the former show. One of the judges in Produce 101, Wang Yibo is also an artist from Yuhua.

Seeking More Talents

The success of these talent shows is built on the accumulation of talent at the country's agencies. However, this process has not gone smoothly in the last few years.

The cultivation of an idol undergoes a strict process. Trainees are selected from a pool of 1,000 wannabe stars. Apprentice-level idols will then face multiple challenges making a performance debut is a rare opportunity that all trainees will enjoy.

Idol agencies must first attract the trainees. Xu Mingchao, CEO at JC Entertainment, told CBN Weekly that his company only had a pool of 30 participants to choose its first batch of trainees. JC Entertainment sent six of its roster to participate in Produce 101 which all came from its set of rookies.

Based on the contestants in Produce 101 and Idol Producer, agencies tend to select trainees who are not well-known in South Korea or those that are have already been 'semi-produced,' as well as students or graduates with basic artistic skills from professional art colleges, as well as is average people who do not have any experience or training.

The mature South Korean training system has almost been completely replicated in China, resulting in the almost same training allocations and steps. The only difference lies in that China sometimes introduce some more culturally-relevant classes with Chinese elements, such as opera.

Debuting at a Faster Rate

The Chinese idol sector can be described as fast. In general, agencies strive to shorten the timeline between practice and debut and roll out new products rapidly to fill the market gap.

Compared with the four to five years it takes South Korean entertainers to make their way to the top, China fosters its idols in a much quicker cycle, typically around one year, according to Oriental Awaken Agency CEO Ji.

But things have not gone well. Take August Cai, who built a successful career after being in the first run of Idol Producer. He made his debut at the end of 2016 but has not attained real stardom -- gaining extensive influence is proving difficult for him and others from the show.

Many debut by releasing a music album or video. In Idol Producer and Produce 101, most groups have their own music but get little response from the market.

As the idol-making sector comes to a bottleneck, both shows have become a hot topic nationwide due to their resources, viewership and marketing. Both have also changed their debut schedules for the groups from talent agencies. Several agencies' stars are not yet competent enough, but due to an urgent need to bring in new recruits, they are sending them to the screens anyway.

The key to the idol economy is building post-debut success, which Chinese agencies have been unable to do for more than 10 years. Many artists get little more than their 15 minutes of fame, likely due to China's entertainment sector being incomplete when compared with those of Japan and South Korea.

In Japan, idols are cultivated slowly. Many groups maintain their popularity through albums or concerts with support from the music industry. While in South Korea, the focus is on exposing the groups with new songs and performances.

The idol sector derives from both the music and television industries. With a lack of original content in China's entertainment sector, wannabe idols struggle to get the exposure they need. There is no market for music, which is the best way for stars to impress, investors in the interview said.

"They are facing the same problems as singers," said Chen. "Without such platforms, they would go nowhere except for variety shows and television dramas. This also gives an obscure position to the meaning of the word 'idol' in China, and there is no real position yet. Only when the talent pool is bigger will there be any positioning."

What Is an Idol?

In South Korea and Japan, the sector exists separately from the film and television industries. "South Korean people define idols as the young stars and artists that teenagers like," Chen added. "The definition in Japan is clearer. It refers to people who actively participate in activities with a large audience."

However, in China, idols, singers, actors and actresses are all stuck in an overlapping concept.

Some Chinese video platforms have noticed this and are beginning to prepare programs to help the wannabes.

"An idol agency is a company of content in nature," Chen said. "It is not complicated to trainees, but the high threshold lies on the back-end operation and continuous output capabilities."

Without constant exposure on bigger platforms, talent agencies will adopt more convenient and efficient ways, such as social media, he added.

On the homepage of Oriental Awaken Agency's Weibo account, there are updates every day. New agencies think highly of dialogue with fans, and Ji Xiang reads their comments and messages to understand their thoughts.

Fans have become participants rather than onlookers, and are no longer limited to just casting votes via smartphones -- they are becoming increasingly influential and their opinions influence the idols.

The most prominent feature of Idol Producer is how it glamorizes viewers as 'public producers.' The program pays attention to anything the fans say, and is always interacting with them.

"The public producers need a real sense that they are producers, which means they need to influence the progress and content of the program," said Chen Gang, chief director of Idol Producer.

Idols Must Grow Up

Participants on Producer 101 and Idol Producer struggle to become idols, and those who to face the troubles of growing from a wannabe to a real pop star.

"Agencies need to give up the idea that they possess the entire life cycle of an artist," said Chen. "Idols and traditional artists are aimed at two different markets," he added, implying that idol agencies focus on bringing in new faces while artist agencies rely on film and television resources.

One such an example is Times Fengjun. After making the TFBoys famous, the firm had to decide whether it would keep focusing on introducing new talent or to focus efforts on the TFBoys.

It chose the former, Chen added, saying that prompted some staff to leave and form their own company.

Idol agencies typically sign long-term contracts with new artists -- at least five years -- but there are always disputes, said Long Danni, who has been a celebrity agent for more than a decade. "Disputes can't be avoided, unless the agency knows what its artists want."

"Idol agencies should not worry about artists leaving," said Chen. "It's not good for famous idols to stay in a group for too long. Being an idol is a profession for young boys and girls. Idols eventually have to make the transition back to actors or singers, which is a rite of passage for them."

The top nine boys in Idol Producer made their debut as the group Nine Percent, while the top 11 girls from Produce 101 formed a group called Rocket Girls 101. This may be the largest pop group in China's entertainment history, and the girls are already counting down to when their group will disband.

The agencies participating in the shows have signed contracts with the platforms which would take over the latter part of the group's operations, meaning the agencies, who know the artists better, cannot make plans for them in their prime.

Editors: James Boynton, William Clegg