The essence of reality TV success is it’s ability to entertain their audience.
Reality TV shows is definitely entertaining to almost everyone around you. Whether it is an extraordinary dance group showing off their acrobatic moves or someone being rejected on The Bachelor, anyone can be guaranteed to be mesmerized or have a good laugh at home with reality television.
I decided to compare the two dance reality TV shows, “NBC World of Dance” and “这！就是街舞”. Why I decided to compare these two shows is that, the goal is the same, one winner takes all. However, what grabs the audience’s attention to these shows are unalike in these two shows, let’s take a closer look.
“NBC World of Dance” is an American reality dance television show that has contestants from all around the world to compete against each other in a series of elimination. The judge panel consists of American celebrities that would give the green-light whether or not the individual or team has made it to the next round. Judges would also give constructive criticism towards each contestant at the end of their piece.
Below is an extract of one of the dance performances from the show.
Windmill on the elbow? Impressive move for sure, pretty sure that is not the actual term for that move though.
Moving forward with the analysis, World of Dance gives dancers around the world for a shot towards fame. Other than spectacular dance moves, the show’s success also comes from idea of using the world as their competition, rather than focusing on a demographic group i.e. American-based dancers. This demonstrates cultural proximity as viewers can feel a sense of pride when watching their own country’s dancers compete against other global dancers. “World of Dance” was the No. 1 new summer series in 18-49 and total viewers in 2017, with over 8 million subscribers on YouTube, taking the throne of the world’s number one urban dance competition.
Now let’s take a look at China’s reality dance TV show, “这！就是街舞”.
That was entertaining to watch, like how do people make their body move like water?
The show made its premiere in February 2018 on China’s streaming website YouKu. The format of this show is similar to World of Dance, with a few twists:
- Judges are able to make impromptu decisions on who to kick out or add during the show, without any consultation with the board of directors
- Songs used in the program are mainly in Mandarin
The end goal of the show is the same as World of Dance, but the Chinese dance reality television show is focused on one particular audience, Chinese.
Catchy pop up fonts will blow up next to the dancers when doing a particular move or movement, similar to game show features. This style of portraying the moves with flashy pop ups is based upon the Asian youth culture, where it is commonly used throughout a broad amount of Asian reality television nationally.
Chinese culture is recognized as performers tend to wear traditional Chinese clothing and use mainstream local songs in their performance, unlike World of Dance streaming Western pop music instead. Other Chinese influence in the show can be seen with the blurred out tattoos and dyed hair of the contestants. This is due to China’s government ban on “Hip Hop”, where tattoos and dyed hair is prohibited on any source of media in the country.
“这！就是街舞” first episode already made 100 million hits within its release on YouKu, with a 9.5 out of 10 ratings from its audience. Making this Chinese reality TV show as successful as World of Dance, in their own way. The methods these two shows both have their own individuality, focusing on their the audience’s appeal based on the cultural differences, which both worked well in each show.
References
Sixth Tone. (2018, March 08). Pop, Lock, Break, Repeat: ‘Street Dance of China’ Wows Audiences. Retrieved from https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1001870/pop,-lock,-break,-repeat-street-dance-of-china-wows-audiences
World of Dance. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.nbc.com/world-of-dance
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