Dramas Fail to Follow Expectations... Dramas in the Slumps

In the age of content flooding, recent dramas are not at all compatible with viewers' desire for something new.

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As of the 2nd of August, a total of 15 dramas are being aired on major Korean channels, 11 of which are weekday mini-series. However, all 11 dramas have remained within single-digit ratings.

Among them, the slump in the melodrama genre is especially noticeable. KBS 2TV's "To All The Guys Who Loved Me" and JTBC's "Was It Love" have ratings of less than 5% (Nielsen Korea), and their popularity has dropped significantly. The evaluation of completeness is also rather cold.

On the other hand, complex genres like JTBC's "The Good Detective", SBS's "Backstreet Rookie" and tvN's "It's Okay to Not Be Okay" are above the 5% range. Although the ratings are not high, mystery elements are mixed in "The Good Detective", MBC's "CHIP-IN", tvN's "Flower of Evil" and JTBC's "Graceful Friends".

While all weekday miniseries are rarely energized, only weekend dramas and daily dramas are generating double-digit ratings thanks to a fixed number of middle-aged viewers.

As such, weekday miniseries are generally in a slump, and especially mellow dramas are showing signs of sluggishness "Because there is nothing new" according to experts.

Jung Duk-hyun, a pop culture critic, pointed out, "While there are dramas that have certain points to look forward to, such as castings, directors, and writers, there are a lot of dramas that seem to have been set up because of the time zone".

"In the case of melodramas, the subject seems to be about non-marriage, but the character ends up getting married", he said. "If you're thinking, 'what's wrong with living alone?' you have to deal with it more boldly, but in the end, it's all about marriage and that's not new. A drama isn't new just because it has a new subject".

Gong Hee-jung, a drama critic, also said, "The public's taste for too much content has diversified already through Netflix, but Korean dramas are just now new enough. The challenge is how to meet profitability and new challenges".

"Even if you look at a non-marriage-based melodrama, you have to take a realistic composition to make a breakthrough", Gong said. "In the case of "Something Happened in Bali", it drew attention as it showed that poor and difficult love may not necessarily show a beautiful ending. Even now, if we add realism, we will be able to create a melodrama that we can sympathize with".

Some analysts say that the modern society does not give classical value to love, which makes it less empathetic to the established melodrama itself.

Kim Sung-soo, a pop culture critic, said, "The core of the drama is to equate my character with me, but many women recently think that 'taking their lives for love' is unhealthy".

"Dramas can't attract attention unless they make the material itself more unconventional", he said. "For example, there should be an attempt to ask provocative questions about the marriage system through an affair or to talk openly about non-married mothers", he said.