I am Really a Superstar

The main stage of the recording studio.

Zhang Ye started busying himself the moment that he came from backstage to coordinate all the tasks, “Do a lighting test again; make sure everything is working well. Stage Choreographer, please do a test for the sound again. Hey, hey, hey. This side of my ear piece seems like there’s a problem with the volume. Help me adjust it. Cameras, do a few seconds of trial recording. The three cameras must not have any problems. I usually follow my flow when it comes to recording; the quality will be affected if I need to re-record it. Let’s aim for a single recording, okay?”

“Teacher Zhang, the seats are not enough!”

“Why did you only notice that now? How many are we short of?”

“Because the internal tickets were a little over-subscribed, we are still short by ten seats!”

“Go to logistics and get a few more. If the colors are different, place them at the back row, so we don’t affect the picture quality. Everyone, check again for any problems. The audience will be arriving soon!”

The show had not even started yet, but Zhang Ye’s voice was already hoarse!

The other programs had teams that had their work divided up properly; every job had a specialist and leader commanding the role. But Zhang Ye’s team was different. The leadership role was all solely his, so anyone who had any problems would come to him for answers. This caused him to be very busy as he had to give instructions out, one after another. Zhang Ye was preparing to use “Tonight 80’s Talkshow” as his talk show foundation. But because of budget and other constraints, he had to cancel the DJ segment and the celebrity guest interviews.

Firstly, it was because he did not have the budget to invite some famous celebrity. Secondly, interviews and game segments had their supporters and detractors. Some liked it a lot, yet there were also many who disliked it a lot, so Zhang Ye decided against using those segments. Interviews, for what they’re worth, were usually platforms for a celebrity to do promotional activities only. Zhang Ye did not want his program to have a mixture of these useless segments, at least not initially. So he prepared a full half hour of solo talk show performance. This also saved a lot of effort on other things. Otherwise, he would be even more busy today!

Outside, the doors opened.

It was not the audience, but the Leaders and other colleagues who came in. They were all holding internal tickets to attend the recording.

Zhang Ye saw them. Not only had Director Wang Xiong attended, even his Leader from the WebTV department, Feng Guiqin, also came. There were two other company Leaders and other seniors from his department. It wasn’t strange, as usually for a new program’s first recording, a group of leaders would attend to do their assessments. This was to ensure the program’s quality. In the group were also Ah Qian, Little Yu and Wang Bei. Dong Shanshan might have been too busy with her work to attend, but the other hosts from the department were also taking part in this recording, like Teacher Gong and Teacher Han. He did not know if they had come to see Zhang Ye make a joke of himself or something else.

The Leaders had arrived, but Zhang Ye did not go to greet them because he did not have the time to deal with those things. He was already struggling to deal with his roles.

“Teacher Zhang!”

“Come over for a moment!”

“This light’s damaged!”

“The earpiece volume can’t be adjusted; will need to get it changed!”

When they arrived in the studio, all they saw was an extremely busy Zhang Ye. Only then did they understand how it would look like if there was only one person handling all of the team’s work.

They sat at the front row.

Feng Guiqin frowned, “Is Little Zhang able to handle all of this by himself?”

Wang Xiong turned his head to her, “It should be okay. He handled everything well the past few days. From the title introduction and props to the planning, all of these were done by him.”

Feng Guiqin nodded, “Have you seen the program’s content yet?”

“Not yet. I did not receive anything, not even the program’s script. Seeing how busy Little Zhang was, I did not ask him for it.” Wang Xiong threw up his hands.

Onstage, Zhang Ye suddenly noticed the center of the stage. There was a rack in front of his position, so he pull it up and asked, “What’s this for?”

That person blinked, “To hold the script.”

Zhang Ye immediately waved his hands, “Get rid of it!”

“Ah? Remove it?” That person replied in ridicule, “How can we get rid of that?”

When Sister Four who personally came over to help out heard the commotion, she asked, “What’s the matter, Wang?”

Wang said nervously, “Sister Four, Teacher Zhang said to remove to rack for the script. This….”

Sister Four was also stunned. She looked at Zhang Ye and said, “If we take it away, where will you put the manuscript? Where will you place the script at? Your program’s at least 30 minutes long. If you consider the parts that need to be edited out, then you need to record at least 40-50 minutes. That’s nearly an hour! How will you be able to record? Off script?”

But no one expected Zhang Ye to reply matter-of-factly, “Of course, it will be off script. I am a host. Do you expect me to read off a script? What a disgrace! If I am going to be a host like that, you might as well find any random person to come do it!”

Zhang Ye set very high standards for himself and his job. In his previous world, if a talk show artist were to host by reading from a script, then it would be too disgraceful. Even if they couldn’t remember their lines, they would use a teleprompter that was not filmed by the camera. Like when Zhou Libo first started doing talk shows, he had also used a rack to place his script on. Every line he said, he would refer to it. Finally, only after he was criticized and mocked by people did he slowly go off script. But Zhang Ye did not need such a process.

Sister Four and the staff around were in disbelief, “You can go totally off script?”

“This is a basic quality as a host, right?” Zhang Ye did not make much of a fuss about it. In his world, there were many outrageous people like that.

Sister Four said, “But you have to be prepared just in case.”

Another youth said, “Yeah, Teacher Zhang. If you really forget a line, at least there’s backup.”

Zhang Ye said without explaining further, “There won’t be any in the case of me. Nor will I forget. If I say to remove it, then quickly remove it. We need to hurry!”

Two miscellaneous staff could only obey and they removed the rack.

Sister Four had a bad feeling about it, so she asked, “Comrade Little Zhang, don’t tell me that it is because you don’t have a script?”

Zhang Ye replied, “I’ve never needed a script for my recordings, never ever.”

Sister Four, “…..”

Staff, “…..”

All of the Leaders and colleagues also heard this from below the stage!

No script? Not even the content for the program was written? Everyone nearly fainted. D*mn! Just how confident are you! Do you need to be so relaxed? Not even having a script prepared? Most of the masses were not optimistic about his new program to begin with, but with this, everyone would never believe that a program could be good if there wasn’t even a script! If it turned out to be a mess, the Leaders might not even approve the release of the first episode of the program!

Teacher Han was speechless, “What the hell is he doing?”

Wang Bei smiled. “This could precisely be the legend that says a skilled man is a daredevil?”

“So what if his skills are good? He’d better not mess things up. If he does, let’s see how he clears the sh*t up!” Teacher Gong had lost the last shred of confidence that he had for Zhang Ye’s program.

Even for people like them who had been in the business longer than Zhang Ye, they could not do without a script for a long program like this. It was not that they had never seen a person like that, but those were the craziest people of the hosting world. Only a few talented people were able to achieve that level of hosting. Of course, they didn’t believe that Zhang Ye could do it!