Superstar K7's top 5 revealed amid controversy
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Jhameel Kim, one of the top five participants on the audition program “Superstar K7,” poses during a press conference at the M Academy in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, Tuesday. / Courtesy of CJ E&M
By Kim Jae-heun
Superstar K7, in its seventh season on TV, announced its top five contestants Tuesday at M Academy in Gangnam, Seoul, amid the show’s lowest audience share since it first aired in 2009.
In the show’s first season, its audience share averaged 5.6 percent and peaked at 10.4 percent and 11.8 percent in its second and third seasons. However, the popularity of the show has dwindled since season four as the audience share fell from 8.7 percent to 4.2 percent in season five and stagnated at 4.5 percent in season six.
In season seven, Superstar K has offered its biggest prizes for the winner in hopes of regaining audience share _ the prizes are 500 million won ($442,909), a Jaguar XE, an album release, an appearance on Mnet Asian Music Awards (MAMA) and support from professional entertainment management. However, the talent show’s ambition to bring back its former glory looks to have failed, and it’s not likely to pick up any time soon.
The audience share for Superstar K7 so far this season has not yet been confirmed, as the show is still ongoing, but its highest share for any of the episodes aired up to now is 4 percent (on episode two) according to Nielsen Korea, which is the lowest compared to any of the other six seasons.
The decline of the talent show’s popularity has been blamed on its editing style that always ends the show trying to arouse the audience’s curiosity for the next show. Superstar K has often been in the middle of controversy too, for casting troublemakers irrelevant to the music field to draw attention from the public. An ex-professional basketball player Gil Min-sae appeared in one of the season’s episodes to repent for his misconduct and said that he decided to live a new life through music by auditioning in Superstar K. But his part in the show backfired for both himself and the program.
Superstar K7 producer Ma Doo-sik, however, said that he has no plan to give up the style of editing of the show.
“Every year people complain about our style of editing, that it is too provocative,” said Ma during a press conference in August. “However, I am only editing this way to maximize and highlight the participants’ unique personalities and talent.”
Chief Producer Kim Ki-woong blamed the decline in the show’s popularity to a similar show on tvN, another channel owned by CJ E&M, the mother company of Mnet that hosts Superstar K.
Unlike the previous seasons’ top five press conference, Kim and Ma did not attend the press conference for season seven.