I'm Really a Superstar

On the fourth day of the Olympics.

After three days of scolding by all the different parties, the issue began to subside.

Zhang Ye, who was sleeping in late, finally woke up at 11 AM. After he got up, he went straight out to the living room and saw his parents watching the Olympics on TV.

"Dad, Mom, how many do we have?"

"We just got another one today."

"And in total?"

"Six gold medals."

"That's not much, is it?"

"Yeah, the performance this year is just average. We threw away our chances in several of the events."

"Hai."

"Do you want to eat something?"

"No, I'm going back to the studio to have a look."

"Oh yes, the swimming finals will be happening in a few days. Get us a few extra tickets."

"Uh, I'll try."

Noon.

At Zhang Ye's studio, everyone was busy working.

When Zhang Ye arrived, Zhang Zuo, smiling, came to him with several documents for him and discussed the work that had been done over the past few days. "Director Zhang, the issue of you tripping the referees has more or less been resolved. The police pretty much leaned toward our side and have already settled it for us. The suspended referees have also returned home and did not make any comments regarding the incident. We were lucky the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games issued that statement this time. That diverted away all of the heat on you and subsequently lightened the impact of the incident."

Zhang Ye browsed through the documents. "Good."

Zhang Zuo pointed at it and said, "This is your popularity score curve over the past few days. Your domestic popularity score has increased by quite a bit again. Although you're still in first place on the A-list rankings, your popularity score has been rising very quickly. This chart over here shows your Asian celebrity ranking, where you've also experienced an increase in your score. We've analyzed the main reason for this to be because of a large number of people around Asia who got to know about you through that incident. Regarding your international ranking, as they only publish data for celebrities who are at least an international C-lister, we can't find out more. But according to our analysis, it is definitely trending up as well. If your popularity in the country and Asia constantly keeps rising, there's no reason why there wouldn't be any changes in the international rankings. But for now, there's no indication of that. In summary, the situation for you now is pretty good overall. Not only did you not get burnt this time, you even increased your visibility on the international scene. I guess we can still consider that a blessing. The only issue is your reputation. I don't think we can really turn that around in the short term."

Zhang Ye laughed and said, "Alright, I got it."

Little Wang also came over. "Director Zhang, these are invitations to collaborate on projects that we've received in the past few days."

"OK, let me have a look at them." Zhang Ye went through them.

Having a team was really very efficient. There was always going to be someone around to help him deal with things like popularity analysis and project negotiations. This saved Zhang Ye a lot of worry and greatly improved his work productivity.

Ha Qiqi came down from upstairs. "What project would you like to take on next?"

"I haven't thought of it yet." Zhang Ye smiled and said, "What do you guys suggest?"

Ha Qiqi and Zhang Zuo gave each other a look.

Ha Qiqi said, "We had a discussion about this, actually. During these two weeks the Olympics are held, anything we try to do will probably end up being insignificant. Nothing can take attention away from the Olympics, after all."

Zhang Zuo said, "Why don't we accept some advertisement campaigns related to the Olympics then? We can earn some money from that and also rub off a little on the Olympics hype."

Zhang Ye threw his hands up and said, "Have you guys been watching any TV lately? The ad campaigns have all gone to the athletes. Their contracts were probably negotiated several months in advance, so do you think that there will be anything left for me? After all, I'm not an athlete, so I'm not really going to have a chance. We should think of something else."

Wu Yi said, "How about producing a new show? That's our rice bowl, after all."

Zhang Ye asked, "What offers do we have?"

Wu Yi said, "Only a few not so popular satellite channels approached us. But after we took a look at their proposals, we didn't find them to be too ideal."

Little Wang giggled and said, "Director Zhang, how about releasing a new song? We can shoot a music video to try for the charts and help increase your popularity. I really like your songs. They're all so good!"

Produce a show?

Shoot a music video?

Hold a concert?

Take on an acting project?

Do an advertisement campaign?

Everyone was throwing out all kinds of ideas onto the table.

But Zhang Ye still did not make a decision. He always had very high standards for the kind of work he would take, so there were more considerations he had to think about. An athlete had a limited sporting lifespan, and their peak when they were in their best physical and competitive state would only last a few years. This was the same for a celebrity too. He always believed that there was a time for everything. If he waited until he was older and missed the opportunity, he wouldn't be able to do those things again even if he wanted to. For example, when he did Ghost Blows Out the Light on radio in the past, the audience were all very receptive to it and all of them only had praise for the program. But if Zhang Ye spent another one or two months doing nothing but telling supernatural ghost stories on radio nowadays, that would obviously not work out and the audience would probably not look forward to it either—this was what it meant by "a time and place for everything." So he always considered every job offer that he received very carefully as he wanted to ensure that he would be able to provide as much variety to the audience as he could give.

So what could he do during this Olympic period?

Or should he wait until the Olympic Games were over to decide?

While he was thinking about it, the doorbell suddenly rang.

Little Wang went to answer the door. "Eh, Teacher Yu?"

The visitor was Zhang Ye's old classmate, and a current host at Central TV Sports Channel, Yu Yingyi.

"Hi." Yu Yingyi waved and smiled.

The studio staff were also very friendly toward her. All of them knew that she was Director Zhang's good friend and classmate from his university days, so they wouldn't treat her like they would treat a client.

Little Wang went to pour some tea for her.

Zhang Ye beckoned for her to take a seat. "What brings you here today?"

Yu Yingyi smiled and said, "I just came to visit my old classmate. Am I not welcome?"

"How could that be? Since I have nothing much to do anyway, why don't we chat over a drink? Beer or Chardonnay? Merlot or whiskey? I have everything here," Zhang Ye said joyfully.

Yu Yingyi rolled her eyes. "Who wants to day drink with you? I'm here for business. I still have commentary to do when I get back in the afternoon. It's the Olympics period. Do you really think that I'm that free?"

Zhang Ye knew that she'd come with an agenda. "Tell me about it then, I'm listening."

Little Wang brought the tea over.

Yu Yingyi was not bothered that the tea was still hot. She brought the teacup up to her mouth and blew at it before drinking. After she put the teacup down, she looked at Zhang Ye. "Didn't you say you have nothing much to do these days?"

Zhang Ye blinked. "Yeah, why?"

Yu Yingyi smiled. "I have an offer, do you want to accept it?"

Zhang Ye chuckled. "Tell me about it first and I'll consider it."

"Look at how careful you're being." Yu Yingyi giggled. "Would I try to harm you? It's definitely something good. Why don't you promise me first and I'll tell you more about it."

Zhang Ye curled his lips. "I can't do that."

Yu Yingyi grumbled, "If you don't promise me first, I won't tell you about it."

Zhang Ye gestured to the outside of the reception room. "Little Wang, please see our guest out."

Yu Yingyi got anxious. "Heh, are you really going to chase me out like this? Alright, alright, I'll tell you."

Zhang Ye smiled but did not say anything.

Yu Yingyi's next words stunned him!

Yu Yingyi looked at him, "Do you want to become an Olympic commentator?"

"Don't joke." Zhang Ye waved her off.

"What do you mean by joking?" Yu Yingyi said, "It's true. Central TV Sports Channel has suddenly decided to recruit an outside host and commentator. Do you want to take the role?"

Zhang Ye was startled. "Are you serious?"

"Why would I lie to you?" Yu Yingyi gave him a look.

Zhang Ye was quite happy. "This sounds like an interesting job, but why did you guys decide to approach me?"

Yu Yingyi said, "Because you're really popular at the moment."

Zhang Ye said, "But my relationship with Central TV is not good."

"I don't care about that. This time, it's Central TV Sports Channel that's inviting you to join us. Whatever fight and disagreements you have with Central TV Department 1 and the station heads have nothing to do with us, right? When you were battling against PeterGo, our department was giving you the most positive of coverage and promoting you throughout the entire event. We don't have any enmity with you and also did not take part in the scolding battle against you with Department 1, right?" Yu Yingyi said.

Zhang Ye shrugged. "I don't remember that."

Yu Yingyi didn't know how to respond.

Zhang Ye looked at her. "Are your guys' viewership ratings doing badly?"

Yu Yingyi became very embarrassed. "How did you know?"

"If the viewership rating goals had been met, how could the Sports Channel possibly risk inviting me to join as a host? You have to know, my reputation has never been good before, and it's even worse at Central TV." Zhang Ye understood the situation very clearly. "Was it due to the gold medal tally being too low in recent days that led to the viewership ratings dropping?"

Yu Yingyi gave a bitter laugh. "Dropping? The viewership rating for our live coverage on the first day was over 40% and even reached a high of 50%. Later on, after the fuss that you kicked up, and with the statement issued by the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games, a lot of the subsidiary news had stolen away the attention from our coverage. Coupled with the decreased amount of gold medals and Team China performing below average, the viewership ratings plummeted. Do you know what the internal estimates for today's ratings are? The off-peak viewership rating went as low as 25%! And the peak estimate was only 37%!"

Zhang Ye said, "That's not too bad then. A Bite of China and The Voice only managed how much in the nationwide viewership ratings? It's at most 10% of what you guys are getting!"

"But this is the Olympics." Yu Yingyi said angrily, "It's even the Beijing Olympics, so how can you compare it with those reality shows? It would definitely be much higher rated than your shows."

She then took out a contract.

Yu Yingyi pushed it to him. "Have a look at the contract that we prepared for you."

Zhang Ye said with a laugh, "I'm too lazy to flip through all that. Just tell me, what do you guys expect from me?"

Yu Yingyi said, "Nothing much. As long as you're willing to join us, everything can be discussed. What the station wants now is for our channel to increase the ratings. During the commentary, you can freely express yourself as you like as long as it's within certain limits, just don't go beyond the boundaries. We're just about ten days away from the closing ceremony. You'll be paired as my partner, and there might also be retired athletes or coaches joining us for the commentary segments. We'll be in charge of the show every day from 1 to 4 PM. All the other time slots will be handled by the other commentary teams. We won't have to worry about those, so the actual working time isn't really that much on average."

Zhang Ye asked, "Where will we be working from?"

Yu Yingyi said, "At the live coverage studio in the Olympic grounds."

Zhang Ye asked, "When do I start?"

Yu Yingyi said, "Tomorrow."

Zhang Ye nodded. Then he looked through the glass partition and clapped his hands.

Little Wang came into the room and said, "Director Zhang?"

"Get me a pen," Zhang Ye said.

"OK." Little Wang brought one over very quickly.

Zhang Ye lowered his head and signed the contract. Then he pushed it back to Yu Yingyi with a smile. "Is that all?"

Yu Yingyi took the contract. "Aren't you at least going to read it?"

Zhang Ye said, "I trust you well enough, don't I?"

"Alright, I get it. I better hurry back and let them know about this." Yu Yingyi smiled happily and said, "Come over early tomorrow. I'll familiarize you."

Zhang Ye said feeling amused, "Do I really need to be? When I started doing live broadcasts, you hadn't even joined Central TV."

"Whoa." Yu Yingyi quipped, "This young man talks really big. Let's see what you're capable of tomorrow then."

After she left, Zhang Ye also came out of the reception room.

Little Wang had obviously let everyone else know about the contract.

Ha Qiqi quickly asked, "Director Zhang, what's going on?"

"What is that contract about?" Zhang Zuo asked in a startled manner.

Everyone crowded around him.

Zhang Ye calmly explained, "Oh, Central TV Sports Channel has invited me to take part in their live coverage for the Olympics as a host and commentator. I'll be starting work tomorrow."

Everyone screamed excitedly!

Ha Qiqi said in surprise, "What?"

Zhang Zuo said, "Such a good deal exists?"

"This is great, this is great!" Little Wang said joyfully.

Zhang Ye also laughed. "Yeah, so how can I not take this job, right?"

Earlier, he was thinking about what he wanted to do next. But there was no need to think anymore. During the Olympics, nothing would garner more attention than the Olympics itself. The live coverage of the Olympics on Central TV Sports Channel was a show that had the craziest viewership ratings compared to any other show!

He had put in so much work for The Voice, and what was its nationwide viewership ratings? At most 2% or so! At most 2% or so!

He had given so much effort for A Bite of China, and what was its nationwide viewership ratings? At most 3% or so!

But for the live coverage of the Olympics?

The nationwide viewership ratings would easily start off with at least 30% as the base ratings and it could get even higher than that. This was not even comparable to what he had achieved so far, so he definitely had to take this job. Furthermore, he would treat it very seriously and put in the effort to make sure it worked. If he could do well here, it would probably help boost his domestic popularity rankings by a very great deal. Besides, as Zhang Ye had never done any sports commentary before, he really liked the idea of having a fresh challenge. Regarding this point, the citizens were also very receptive to it. It was as though everyone really enjoyed watching Zhang Ye cross over into all the various types of professions!