Korea’s broadcasters have a bad case of Monday blues. Their antidote includes a dose of kiddie charm andplaying around with slots.

As drama series flood the market, production costs soar, broadcast/cable ratings spread thin and operating losses mount, Korea’s long-standing Monday/Tuesday night prime-time drama slots are in full flight, some retreating right off the schedule.

Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) says the radical move, which has been rumoured since early 2019 as broadcasters cast around for cost-cutting measures, is temporary. One of the country’s big-three broadcasters, MBC has been playing around with its Monday-Tuesday schedule for a few months, including shifting drama earlier in an effort to exit the fast lane and find a friendlier space.

A second free-TV broadcaster, Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS), is taking a drama break for a couple of months.

The biggest one of all, public broadcaster Korean Broadcasting System (KBS), isn’t confirming or denying anything, but insiders say the production schedule falls off a cliff and goes splat in December this year. The last two KBS dramas that will air on Monday-Tuesday nights are I Wanna Hear Your Song and Mung Bean Chronicles (aka The Tale of Nokdu).

MBC confirmed earlier in August that its Monday/Tuesday 8.55pm dramas would be replaced by “some other genres” when current series, fantasy drama Welcome 2 Life ends on 24 September. Welcome 2 Life, directed by Kim Keun-Hong (Make a Woman Cry), premiered on 5 August, replacing the second season of Partners for Justice about a lawyer who is accidentally sent to a much more humble life in a parallel world.

MBC is calling the decision to cut drama from Monday and Tuesday nights a “temporary strategy” and says there may be a new weekend drama slot. No final decisions had been made at presstime.

SBS – the home of hits such as My Love From the Star and Legend of the Blue Sea – ditched its 10pm Monday/Tuesday drama slot on 12 August, replacing it with reality/variety show Little Forest for two months until the middle of October. Little Forest (16 x 70 mins, 10pm) puts kids in an eco-friendly house in the forest for three days with four celebrities, away from their parents and their smart phones. SBS’s last Monday-Tuesday night drama was The Secret Life of My Secretary (6 May to 25 June 2019).

SBS decision really is temporary. The network has already set a return date – 7 October, 10pm – when Little Forest ends. SBS comes back with 16-part office mystery series, VIP with Jang Na-ra, about a team at a department story that manages VIP clients. The series is written by Cha Hae-Won and directed by Lee Jung-Rim.

For now, KBS continues to fill Mondays and Tuesday with drama series, until the end of September at least.

KBS is currently airing romcom, I Wanna Hear Your Song, in the 10pm slot. The series, which runs to 24 September, stars Kim Se-jeong as a woman who witnesses a murder and then loses her memory. Period romcom, The Tale of Nokdu, is tentatively scheduled to follow from 30 September.

The reason for the retreat is not difficult to understand. Audience are spoiled for choice and ad revenue is spread thin. On any given week earlier this year, more than 20 premium long-form dramas competed for attention in an expanded universe of channels, slots, platforms and production budgets.

And then there’s Netflix, which astonished domestic producers with its spend on both Kingdom (released Jan 2019) and Arthdal Chronicles (released 1 June 2019). Netflix has never confirmed budgets, but the industry puts Kingdom’s spend at anywhere between US$1.8 million and US$2 million per episode. Arthdal Chronicles is said to have come in at US$2.3 million an episode, with a total budget of KRW54 billion/US$45.8 million.

Longer-running serial dramas such as KBS’ My Only One, which ran from September 2018 to March 2019, hit 48.5%, but the shorter higher-end titles find it difficult to hit double digit ratings. Outliers such as Sky Castle, by JTBC’s DramaHouse and local indie HB Entertainment, which peaked at 23.8%, gave people hope. But clearly not enough to save Mondays and Tuesdays.

Published in ContentAsia Issue Four 2019, 26 August 2019