139: Chapter 139: Chips, Stage, and Unexpected Appearance

Negotiations with potential broadcast platforms were more intense than anticipated. Inside the conference room, even the air conditioning's chill could not dispel the sense of tension.

"Sunday at 8 PM? Forgive my frankness, Alex." The acquisition director from a top-tier satellite TV station pushed up his glasses. "For a brand-new, complex music variety show, the risk at this time slot is too high. We prefer placing it in the Friday or Saturday 10 PM slot as an 'innovation testing ground' for younger audiences. For the 8 PM prime time slot, we need programs with a more stable viewership base."

The representative from another leading streaming platform, focused on young users, was more concerned with the division of interests: "We recognize the potential of phantom singer, and we understand your desire to keep the derivative content ecosystem within 'Flashpoint' and 'Voice of Truth'. However, regarding joint investment promotion and advertising revenue sharing, our investment and channel value must be fully reflected. If most interactive traffic and derivative consumption are directed to your platform, then our copyright acquisition fees and revenue sharing ratios need to be re-evaluated."

Every question pointed straight to the core: prime time meant higher viewership requirements and advertising value, necessitating a broader audience base, whereas the "guessing" attribute of phantom singer was relatively niche; the platforms were covetous of the show's ability to drive traffic, yet wary of working for someone else's benefit.

Alex listened to the statements from all sides, his 【Information Reception Filtering】 allowing him to more clearly distinguish what were true bottom lines and what were bargaining chips. He tapped his fingertips on the table, waiting for everyone to pause before speaking slowly.

"Regarding the time slot," he looked at the satellite TV director, "precisely because its format is novel and highly interactive, it needs prime time exposure to ignite. While the Friday and Saturday young audiences are important, the guessing fun and musical appreciation threshold of phantom singer are not high; it has the capacity to attract a wider family audience. We can promise that in the main content, we will strengthen the watchability of the music itself and the universal appeal of the contestants' stories, weakening overly niche expressions. At the same time," he shifted his tone, "if the satellite station is willing to provide prime time support, we can offer greater resource allocation and exclusive rights in areas such as joint promotion and offline event implementation."

He turned to face the streaming platform representative: "Regarding the ecosystem and revenue sharing, our logic is precisely the opposite. It is precisely because 'Flashpoint' and 'Voice of Truth' undertake the vast majority of interactive operations, community maintenance, and long-tail content development that the broadcast platform is liberated, allowing you to focus more on the core single advantage of 'main feature playback'. This lowers your operating costs and risks. Regarding joint investment, we can completely divide the rights packages—main feature advertisements and verbal endorsements will primarily go to the broadcast platform; all advertising revenue brought by online interaction, derivative content, and contestant social media cooperation will primarily go to our side. This is a specialized division of labor and benefit sharing based on respective strengths, not a zero-sum game."

He proposed a detailed "Rights Matrix" division plan, clearly delineating different forms of advertising, content on different platforms, and business collaborations at different stages, accompanied by traffic data projections based on past projects like "Resonance Era".

The conference room fell into a thoughtful silence. Alex's proposal was not a blind concession, but rather the construction of a more complex, yet potentially more efficient and mutually beneficial new structure. This required the platforms to step out of their traditional mindset.

"We need time for internal evaluation." Ultimately, both the satellite TV director and the streaming representative gave similar responses. The negotiations had not broken down, but there had been no immediate breakthrough either. This was commercial reality; behind every major decision lay countless hours of calculation and trade-offs.

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Platform negotiations remained unresolved, but show preparations could not stop. In a medium-sized studio rented by "Echo Vision", the prototype for the phantom singer debut stage was being tensely constructed. The lighting, sound system, the massive circular judging panel seats, and the most core element—the contestant passage that would be decorated with various gorgeous or bizarre masks—were all slowly turning from blueprints into reality.

Taylor, as the music director, had entered "tyrant" mode. She remained on-site, nitpicking every speaker placement, every environmental sound effect test, and even the material of the judging panel seats (demanding they not produce distracting friction noise).

"Tighten the reverb here a bit more; I want a sense of mystery, not a bathhouse Echo!" Taylor shouted into the walkie-talkie, then immediately saw Alex walking in and raised an eyebrow. "Big shot, finally have time to come and inspect your 'guessing playground'?"

"Just coming to see if the 'tyrant' has driven the engineers crazy." Alex smiled and looked around. The stage design was full of futurism and a sense of ritual; the lighting program was being debugged, with beams of light cutting through the dark space, creating a dreamy yet slightly tense atmosphere. "How does it feel?"

"The hardware is up to standard." Taylor walked over and handed him a pair of monitor headphones. "The key is the 'people'. How is the screening for the first episode's test recording going? Without 'stars' with enough suspense and talent, no matter how beautiful this stage is, it's just an empty shell."

Alex put on the headphones, which were playing a candidate's audition clip; the voice was ethereal and graceful, the technique skilled. "There are a few good ones. But one is still missing... a 'tuning hammer' that can establish the show's tone and make people forget to breathe the moment they open their mouth." He was also looking for that unknown variable that could instantly ignite the topic.

Just then, Marcus hurried over, his face carrying a hint of unbelievable excitement, and lowered his voice: "Alex, Taylor, you need to hear this." He took out his phone and played an audio clip.

There was no accompaniment, only an a cappella segment. The voice was not flawless, even a bit rough, but the sense of weathered storytelling contained within, along with a vast aura that seemed to have traveled through time and space, instantly grabbed both their ears. What was sung was a snippet of an extremely obscure, almost lost Northwest folk song, yet it was sung with an original, raw power.

"Who is this?" Taylor asked immediately.

"It was anonymously submitted to the 'Flashpoint' official selection email. There was only this audio, a codename 'Spirit of the Wasteland', and one line: 'Beneath the mask, only the singing voice can prove its origin.'" Marcus said quickly. "The technical department traced the IP, and just like that 'Terracotta' from before, it went through layers of jumps, ultimately pointing to an overseas proxy server. But voiceprint comparison preliminarily rules out known singers; it should be a newcomer, or... a recluse extremely skilled at disguise."

Alex and Taylor exchanged a glance. They both saw the same thing in each other's eyes: this was the "tuning hammer" they had been waiting for. The mystery, the vocal characteristics, the storytelling potential, and the proactive approach all fit the core of phantom singer perfectly.

"Can we contact them?" Alex asked.

"The email is one-way encrypted; there is no return address. We can only wait for them to contact us again." Marcus shook his head.

"Then we wait." Alex made a prompt decision. "Adjust the first episode recording schedule and reserve a spot for this 'Spirit of the Wasteland'. At the same time, all promotional warm-ups surrounding the first episode can moderately release information about a 'mysterious anonymous person' or 'a voice from the wasteland' to build hype in advance."

An unplanned "variable" could very likely become the show's biggest "explosive point".

A few days later, news that phantom singer would land on a top-tier satellite TV station's Sunday 8 PM slot and be broadcast simultaneously with a leading streaming platform began to circulate in the industry in a controlled manner. This was clearly a positive signal released by both sides, even though negotiations had not yet concluded. At the same time, on the "Flashpoint" platform, the heat of interactive topics regarding the show's creativity, judge speculation, and especially "what kind of mysterious voice are you most looking forward to" was quietly climbing.

Within the production team, the seven initial contestants for the first episode were finally determined. Six were talented singers or crossover figures with distinct characteristics who had passed through layers of screening, while the seventh was that "Spirit of the Wasteland" whose voice could be heard but whose person could not be seen. Everything about "him/her", including the mask design and entrance method, became top secret, directly handled by Alex and Taylor.

On the eve of the debut stage recording, Alex checked the overall process one last time. The system interface appeared silently:

【Historical Cumulative popularity】 117,800,000 points (growth brought by project pre-heating)

【Available popularity】 36,530,030 points

【New Notification: Large-scale project phantom singer has entered the critical execution stage, successfully attracting a high-value mysterious variable (Spirit of the Wasteland) to join. The host is balancing progress between complex commercial negotiations and content creative control. Reward trait tendency: 【Precision Negotiation】—In negotiations involving multilateral interest division, intuitive perception of all parties' bottom lines and potential exchange space is slightly improved.】

【Long-term mission 'phantom singer' advanced to the 'Debut Stage Recording' node.】

The reward continued to serve his current reality management. Alex closed the interface and pulled his attention back to the process sheet in front of him. Tomorrow, the first mask would be revealed... no, put on. The bet had been placed, and the roulette wheel had begun to spin.

He walked to the window and looked out at the city lights. The platform maneuvering, the stage construction, the appearance of the mysterious contestant... all threads were converging. And his "influencer" and "celebrity" identities would also be projected into a larger, more unpredictable public opinion field through this meticulously crafted "guessing machine".

Feet firmly on the ground, the stage is set.

Just waiting for the curtain to rise and the voice to emerge.