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The Fall and Rise of the Drama Kingdom

The stagnant ground-wave drama market is stretching. As ground-wave mini-series gained momentum last year, dramas exceeding 20% in viewer ratings are appearing one after another. The three ground-wave broadcasters' Monday-Tuesday dramas, which had been temporarily suspended, have also been reorganized, giving a lot of support to the production of dramas.

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The ground-wave drama market was once called the 'drama kingdom'. According to a report by the Korea Creative Content Agency in 2013, when dramas were a hit, they accounted for the highest portion of Korean broadcasters. According to the ratio of drama programming time for each ground-wave broadcaster, KBS was at 36.7%, MBC was at 46.8% and SBS at 50.8%. In particular, MBC and SBS devoted about half of the channel's total broadcasting time to dramas.

In addition, the report shows that a total of 74 dramas were compiled by ground-wave broadcasters in 2009, a total of 91 in 2011 and 106 in 2012. This is also a figure that shows how much ground-wave broadcasters are working hard to produce dramas to gain the reputation of being a 'drama kingdom'.

However, in 2019, the three broadcasters stopped the Monday-Tuesday drama series. First of all, SBS organized the entertainment program "Little Forest" as a follow-up to the drama "The Secret Life of My Secretary", which ended on June 25th last year. In fact, Monday-Tuesday dramas have been abolished. Since then, MBC has decided to temporarily suspend Monday-Tuesday dramas after "Welcome 2 Life" on September 24th of the same year and so did KBS after "The Tale of Nokdu" on the 25th of November.

This was because dramas have been flooding as platforms have diversified and the influence of ground-wave dramas has rapidly weakened over the years due to the aggressive production of dramas by general programming channel jTBC and cable tvN. The 10PM miniseries and their commercials were even said to 'help products sell out through advertisements', but as the influence of other platforms increased, advertisements that were focused only on ground-wave dramas were dispersed.

Mini-series usually require more than 10 billion won in production costs per episode, but they have been in the loss due to shrinking advertising. In order to overcome this, ground-wave broadcasters have constantly demanded interim advertisements, but because of various opposition, they eventually concluded that they are 'temporary suspending Monday-Tuesday dramas'.

However, analysts say that the Korea Communications Commission recently reported that they will be allowing ground-wave broadcasters interim advertisements, which has been slowing down for years, affecting the resumption of Monday-Tuesday dramas. As allowing ground-wave commercials is expected in the second half of this year, it is seen as a move to strengthen the drama's presence before that.

MBC has been broadcasting "365: Repeat the Year" since the 23rd of March. It's been 6 months since "Welcome 2 Life" that ended in September last year. KBS 2TV has been airing a four-episode drama "How to Buy a Friend" since the 20th is releasing "Born Again" on the 20th. SBS managed a successful Monday-Tuesday comeback with the drama "VIP" last year, and continued the success with "Dr. Romantic 2" and "Nobody Knows".

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