Broadcasters change TV schedules to raise drama viewership

A scene from "The King in Love" / Courtesy of MBC

By Park Jin-hai

Broadcasters are being criticized for deliberately changing TV schedules to pull up drama ratings.

On Monday night, major broadcasters spent almost two hours showing reviews of previous episodes of dramas, right before the drama’s scheduled broadcasting time, replacing other programs.

MBC took the prime time and aired 30 minutes of highlight clips of four previous episodes of its newly launched drama “The King in Love,” before it aired its fifth episode. “School 2017,” the same time slot drama on KBS 2, also spent an hour to recap the previous two episodes from 9 p.m. SBS. The broadcasting company devoted two hours from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. to airing director’s cuts to promote its new drama “Falsify” before its premiere at 10 p.m.

Although broadcasters claim it is intended to increase viewers’ understanding and interest in the dramas, analysts says that it is only a trick to raise viewership of dramas struggling with low ratings, at the expense of documentaries and educational TV programs.

“Those dramas, which succeed in drawing in viewers early on, are more likely to win the ratings competition. So broadcasters air the two previous episodes before the third episode to have the upper-hand,” said an official at a local broadcasting firm.

However, the effect of such tactics is questionable.

The viewership rating of the third episode of “School 2017,” aired Monday, posted 4.2 percent, the same as the second episode and a drop from 5.9 percent for its first episode.

“The King in Love” on Monday recorded a 6.6 percent viewers rating, edging up a little from its previous episode’s 5.5 percent. But due to the changed TV schedule for “The King in Love,” MBC didn’t air its documentary TV show “Real Story Eye.”

“It has become habitual now for other documentary or educational shows to be cancelled, due to broadcasters’ focusing on dramas,” said an official of a local production company for educational TV programs.

Yoon Suk-jin, a Chungnam National University professor, said “Broadcasters’ arbitrary rescheduling of TV programs to save dramas is tantamount to hindering the rights of viewers and breaking their promise to them.”