Idol Producer


Idol Producer is a 2018 Chinese reality boy group survival show, which premiered on January 19, 2018, on iQIYI. It is presented by Lay Zhang with Li Ronghao, Jackson Wang, MC Jin, Cheng Xiao and Zhou Jieqiong serving as mentors. On April 6, 2018, the nine highest ranked contestants debuted as Nine Percent.

Concept

In 2017, Idol Producer took 100 out of 1908 trainees from 87 entertainment agencies all over Asia, which represented their companies and 8 of whom were independent trainees. The trainees were evaluated multiple times throughout the show by the audience's votes with trainees being eliminated. In the final episode, the nine most-voted-on trainees got to debut as a boy group and were set to promote for 18 months; The voting system is similar to those of South Korean reality television shows Produce 101 and Mix Nine.

Coaches

  • Lay Zhang — Production director/mentor
  • Li Ronghao — Vocal mentor
  • Jackson Wang — Rap mentor
  • MC Jin — Rap mentor
  • Cheng Xiao — Dance mentor
  • Zhou Jieqiong — Dance mentor

    Episodes

Episode 1 (January 19)

Contestants choose stickers from A to F as a self-assessment to grade themselves. The contestants enter the studio, where 100 seats are arranged in a pyramid with a chair for the #1 trainee at the top. They are introduced by their label and choose seats from 1 to 100. The contestants then give performances for the judges, grouped by agency. The judges then reassign the trainees a grade based on their overall performance, with A being the highest and F the lowest.

Episode 2 (January 26)

The rating for the first round is unveiled while the grading sessions for trainees continue. After receiving their initial grade, Zhang Yixing announces that the trainees must together perform the show's titular single "Ei Ei" with only three days for preparation. Trainees will have a stand-alone performance that is filmed only once. The coaches give a re-evaluation prior to the filming of the performance to reassign the trainees to another A-F grade. The trainees are then rearranged according to their newly reassigned grade.

Episode 3 (February 2)

Training to perform the show's title song "Ei Ei" begins. After three days, the trainees are filmed performing the title song and are reevaluated by the judges. The B, C, D, and F grade trainees vote to select the center of the entire group, settling on individual trainee Cai Xukun, who narrowly defeats trainee Zhu Zhengting by two votes. Trainees with an F grade after the reevaluation are denied the right to perform and must watch the performance as spectators. However, before the performance begins, the judges decide to let some of the particularly hard-working F grade trainees perform.
After recording "Ei Ei", it is revealed that for the second challenge, the trainees will be put into 16 teams to perform 8 songs. Two teams will be performing and competing against each other for each of the 8 songs: Jay Chou's "半兽人 ", "PPAP", Jolin Tsai's "大艺术家 ", "Dance to the Music", "代号魂斗罗", Zhang Yixing's "Shake", CNBLUE's "Can't Stop", and "Get Ugly". Cai Xukun, because he was the center for the title song "Ei Ei", is allowed to choose his team's members and song first. The members of the winning team for each song will automatically receive 10,000 votes. The judges also announce that half of the trainees will be eliminated from the show following the second challenge. The two "半兽人 " teams' performance, with the B team beating the A team.
Color key
  • Center
  • Winning Team

    Episode 4 (February 9)

The remaining 14 teams' performances are shown. Footage of each team practicing was shown before their respective performances. After the performance of each pair of groups, the live audience is given the opportunity to vote for their favorite member out of both of the competing teams. Individual votes were added up for an overall team score, and 10,000 votes were given to each member of the winning team for each song. Taiwanese trainee Chen Linong of "The Great Artist" team A won the most votes overall, with 10,000 bonus votes added to his 210 live audience votes. Zhang Yixing announces that the 39 trainees with the fewest votes will be eliminated next week. The votes from this week's live performance will be added to the online votes to determine the top 60 trainees.

Episode 5 (February 16)

The top 60 trainees with the most votes are announced, starting from rank 59 and announced in groups of ten. After every group of ten, clips of the trainees participating in various activities are shown. Polls among the trainees for the "best visual" and "the person I would most want to introduce to my little sister" were conducted. Taiwanese trainee Lin Yanjun is voted as "best visual" by his fellow trainees. The trainees race against each other to claim presents for the Chinese New Year. The trainees also do a dance battle, dancing to "Ei Ei" at various speeds. Judges Cheng Xiao and Zhou Jieqiong select the winners of the dance battle, who ask that their reward be to let the entire group of trainees go eat Haidilao Hot Pot, a request which the director grants.
Out of the top 9 trainees from voting, ranks 1-7 remain in the same position as last week's episode. Cai Xukun remains as rank 1 with a landslide victory of around 4 million votes against Chen Linong. Liang Hui is revealed to be rank 60, saving himself from elimination by a few thousand votes, demonstrating the importance of the 10,000 bonus votes that were awarded to the winning teams in last week's episode. The eliminated trainees leave quietly after saying goodbye early the next morning.

Episode 6 (February 23)

The trainees begin their position evaluation group performances, with trainees selecting songs that can showcase their specialties in the vocal, dance, or rap categories. There are five songs for the vocal category:, Chen Li's 《小半》, Kimberley Chen's 《爱你》 ; four songs for the dance category ; and four songs for the rap category. The trainees with higher rankings pick their songs first, and once the chosen song reaches its member limit, the later trainees can no longer pick that song. The trainees' accumulated votes are reset to zero for this third challenge. The most possible votes that a trainee could earn from this challenge is 150,000, with the winning members of each winning group gaining 50,000 votes, and an extra 100,000 votes to the winning trainee in each category. The trainees from rank 36-60 after the second round of online voting at the end of this challenge will be eliminated.
Judges Jackson Wang and MC Jin provide mentorship to the trainees in an informal Q&A session. The trainees pick their songs in order of rank. Grouped by songs, the trainees in each group choose a center and a leader. Judges Cheng Xiao and Zhou Jieqiong provide dance advice. Trainee and Leader of "Nunchucks" Zhou Yanchen, who has been practicing late into the night, collapses at the end of the dress rehearsal due to hypoglycemia. The "《双节棍》", "Artist", "《我怀念的》", and "Turn Down for What" groups perform, and their rehearsal experiences are shown. The "Papillon" group prepares to perform.
Color key
  • Center
  • Leader
  • Leader and Center
  • Top of the Category

    Episode 7 (March 2)

The trainees continue the position evaluation group performances with "Sheep", "Loving You", "Very Good", and "Flow", in which Center Zhu Yunyi suffered an eye injury during dance rehearsal at midnight of the live performance when his belt hit his right contact lens and temporarily blinded him due to hyphema. He had to stay in the green room during the performance, while his twin brother Zhu Yuntian and his teammates performed without him. Zhu Yuntian ended up getting first. "Little Half/Xiao Ban" Team, "Me Too" also performed. The winners of each performance and the winners of each category are revealed.
Color Key
  • Top of Each Category
  • Top of Each Group

    Episode 8 (March 9)

The day after the Position Evaluations, Zhang Yixing provides his own Q&A session and shared his own experiences as a trainee, and how his agency's system differs from Idol Producer's system, like a 3-hour-only hire on practice rooms where you must sign for time slots, and the meals must be pre-ordered in the SM cafeteria. He also shared a change in mentality after debut. A day later, he revealed via video conference call that the next mission is the Concept Evaluation, where the trainees, as chosen by Idol Producers, will become the original singers to 5 original songs of different styles and concepts. However, the elimination to top 35 will occur midway through the preparation, meaning the final number of each group will be 5 groups of 7. If a team is somehow wiped out after the midpoint cuts, the team will be rearranged in later episodes. The voting system also changes. First, the live audience pick the team that performs the best, then from that winning team, the trainee who performs the best will be picked. Each member of the winning team gains a pool of 500,000 votes, of which, the trainee that is the best of the best gets an extra 200000 votes, while the rest gain 50000 each. The five songs are "Firewalking", "Boom Boom Boom", "Listen to What I Say ", "I Will Always Remember ", and Dream. In the initial stage, the group of 12 is split into 2 groups of 6, with 2 temporary centers and a temporary leader. Zhu Yunyi has recovered from hyphema, and Zhou Yanchen has recovered from fainting from hypoglycemia for the practices for the new missions. On the morning of the reveal of the top 35, they write their final diary entries, which also serve as letters of gratitude to the mentors. Due to the longer voting periods including bonus votes added, over 255 million votes were received. He Dongdong plummets from 9th to 33rd over the last 3 weeks of voting, but still gained over 1.7 million votes. Cai Xukun retained his no.1 spot, while Li Junyi unofficially released his self-written song "The Greatest Dream" before he was eliminated.
Color Key
  • Center
  • Leader
  • Leader and Center