I'm Really a Superstar
chapter-727

Chapter 727: Skyrocketing popularity! Good preparation is the key to success!

Translator: Legge Editor: – –

At night.

Caishikou.

Zhang Ye returned home very late on this day. He walked unsteadily, obviously looking like he had a few drinks. After knocking on the door, his mother came to open it for him. His home living room was lit up.

His mother asked, “Why did you come home so late?”

“We had a celebratory feast. Since no one left early, it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to leave first.” Zhang Ye spotted his father sitting on the sofa, reading a newspaper. “Why aren’t the two of you asleep yet?”

His mother said, “We were waiting for you, what else?”

“Where’s Chenchen?” Zhang Ye asked.

His father pointed to the bedroom. “She went to bed long ago.”

His mother was in a good mood, smiling and saying, “Your dad and I just finished watching the news. All the media outlets are talking about The Voice and the reviews are especially positive. I heard that the viewership ratings for the season finale broke records again? Well done! You’ve really done me proud!”

Zhang Ye said proudly, “But of course. Who do you think your son is?”

His father reminded him, “Don’t get arrogant, there’s still a long way ahead of you.”

“I know, Dad.” Zhang Ye also sat down and picked up a copy of the newspaper. He said, “Let me see what they are saying about my show. I’ve been so busy all of today, entertaining others during the celebratory feast that I couldn’t rest for a minute.”

The newspaper evaluations gave a mixed review of Zhang Ye as a person, with each review greatly differing from the next. However, on the issue of his works, especially of The Voice, most of the media’s comments were consistent. One of the newspapers wrote a rather interesting article. The article explored with wonderment: “Usually, the style of the work reflects the character of person who created it. However, those words do not apply to Zhang Ye. Perhaps many people will wonder for the rest of their lives about one thing—why is that a person like Zhang Ye who attracts so much negative news and is full of negative energy can come up with works that are so unexpected of him and full of positive energy that are also well-loved by the people!?”

His parents went to bed.

When Zhang Ye finished reading the newspapers, he also ambled back to his bedroom. Without speaking, he turned on his computer and immediately went online to check the Celebrity Rankings Index.

S-list Rankings.

A-list Rankings.

B-list Rankings.

The list was progressively loaded.

Finally, Zhang Ye found his name within the B-list rankings and clicked on it. It opened up the popularity score chart. He purposely went back to three months ago on the chart, the time he had just started preparing for the production of The Voice. He set the chart’s table and graph to show his popularity score from that day until the current day.

Starting from the far left region of the graph, he could clearly see that his popularity score had a smooth and stable upward trend, without too much variation. He had been constantly placed around the bottom of the B-list rankings at that time, but when The Voice’s second episode was broadcast, his popularity score showed a sudden increase with the slope curving 30 degrees upward. Among the list of 30-40 B-list celebrities, he steadily climbed up the rankings!

36th place!

33rd place!

30th place!

When it reached the period where The Voice’s fifth episode was broadcast, Zhang Ye’s popularity score had overtaken Fan Wenli’s, who was near the bottom of the B-list rankings. He was even maintaining that ascending momentum with the passage of time!

27th place!

25th place!

Most of the popularity he gained was from The Voice, which he was the executive director and overall planner for. There was also his amazing performance as the host of The Voice. Of course, a portion of this popularity was gained from other sources, such as the scolding battle he had online with his industry peers, the palindrome poem, the questions that he had written for those two subject exams in the Beijing college entrance exam, as well as the car smashing incident at Tsinghua University. All of it contributed some portion!

The graph then reached the far right region which indicated his popularity score as of today.

At this moment, Zhang Ye had risen to 22nd place on the B-list Celebrity Rankings Index. From his specified timeline of the data displayed, he had risen more than ten spots, and judging from the popularity score increase during this time period, it was the highest amount of popularity he had gained ever since his debut!

Importantly, being in the B-list rankings was no longer the same as being in the C- or D-list rankings. Advancing one spot proved to be a very difficult task, let alone advancing more than ten spots. Back then, when Zhang Ye had just broken into the B-list rankings, he tried out many things and still only brought himself up one or two spots out of last place. It was like he was moving at the pace of a tortoise, moving up the rankings bit by bit, slowly advancing like a creeping snail. All of this was actually down to the fact that celebrities in the B-list rankings were also rather well-known people with a good foundation for their popularity. Their popularity scores would not just stay as they were, so even if your popularity increased, the others would also have an increase in their own popularity. Naturally then, promotions in the rankings would be much slower. This was all within reason. However, with The Voice this time, Zhang Ye had bulldozed his way through from the bottom of the B-list rankings all the way to the middle of it. He had even overtaken Chen Guang with his momentum!

As of now, these were the rankings around Zhang Ye’s position.

B-list Celebrity Rankings:

21st place: Hu Fang.

22nd place: Zhang Ye.

23rd place: Chen Guang.

While Fan Wenli was at 29th place.

Zhang Ye did not know who Hu Fang was as he had never come across him before. But regarding Old Chen and his wife, everyone knew who they were.

Before The Voice was produced, the Chen Guang and Fan Wenli couple was more popular than Zhang Ye. Fan Wenli was ranked a little higher than Zhang Ye, while Chen Guang was ranked much higher. This was due to the fact that both of them were highly ranked within the singing industry, where they were like big shots who were near the top. Meanwhile, Zhang Ye was only a radio host who had dabbled in the local and online TV stations as a host, written poems, given lectures, authored a novel, and proved a mathematical conjecture. All of these activities targeted a smaller crowd and was also at a more complex level, so he definitely had no way to compare to Old Chen and Fan Wenli!

But with The Voice, all of that changed!

It wasn’t that Chen Guang and Fan Wenli’s popularity did not grow. As coaches on The Voice, the couple’s popularity also greatly increased and their celebrity rankings rose as well. But it was precisely because of Zhang Ye’s massive increase of popularity that made him be able to overtake the couple’s popularity scores.

Counting the reasons, it was probably only down to the following 2 factors.

Reason 1: Zhang Ye was too good at getting attention. He was the overall planner for The Voice as well as its executive director, even taking on the position of host. Since the audience all knew that Zhang Ye was the overall planner and executive director, they would naturally place more focus on him and the popularity would mainly go to Zhang Ye. He had appropriated a share of the popularity that was supposed to go to the four coaches, unlike with the original version of The Voice produced back in his previous world. Zhang Ye had reversed the roles of the host and the guests.

Reason 2: Because their paths were different, Chen Guang and Fan Wenli might have been dominating the singing industry, but when they stepped out of it, the two could not be considered very active in the greater entertainment circle. Their popularity in the singing industry also came from them walking the well-beaten path. Now that they both had almost gotten all the way to the top, they found it difficult to go any further. Naturally, this path also became narrower with their chances becoming limited. Even if the singing industry was a key industry of the entertainment circle, their potential for popularity was already close to the limit. Even if they could add onto it, there weren’t many ways they could achieve it. But it was different for Zhang Ye. This was where you could see Zhang Ye grabbing an advantage over them since he was taking multiple paths, taking part in everything that was happening in the entertainment industry. Novels, poems, shows, exam questions, lectures, there was basically nothing he did not do. So this created a much wider path for the future. Rather than saying that he was almost at his maximum potential, he was just starting out in all of these fields he had dabbled in. As for his original profession as a host, he had never stepped foot into a satellite TV station that had nationwide coverage before this. He had always been working at a local or online television station. Since it was his first time as a Central TV host, the effects were much more obvious as they came from a qualitative change in his work.

Thinking back to some of the evaluations the experts had of him, Zhang Ye could only chuckle at them. Those industry insiders were not optimistic about him, and even some of his friends and relatives felt that his path to fame was an odd and difficult one since he was only doing things that appealed to the minority. If even Chen Guang, a big shot celebrity who could hold his concerts overseas in some countries found it hard to move up any further, then where could a jack of all trades like you—a host who gave lectures, wrote novels, and composed poems—go? Zhang Ye had ever doubted himself at any time in the past, but in the end, it was because of Wu Zeqing’s support and encouragement of him that he was enlightened. She provided him a clear direction. The words Old Wu had said to him back then would never be forgotten by Zhang Ye in his life. The idea of walking many paths was first suggested by Old Wu!

This was also the reason why many singers switched over to acting when they reached a peak in their singing careers. It was also the reason why many movie stars switched to making album or writing novels when they had reached their peak in their respective industry!

Facts had proven Old Wu right!

Facts had proven that Zhang Ye had not taken the wrong path!

When he was initially not that popular, he might not have seen this. But now that he was a B-list celebrity, the advantage Zhang Ye had by walking multiple paths was gradually beginning to show. Chen Guang could no longer move up, while Fan Wenli was already slowing down in her rise. With celebrities like these encountering a bottleneck in their careers, it greatly surprised many of those industry peers, experts, and the media who were not optimistic about Zhang Ye!

—This was what you called “good preparation is the key to success”!