By Park Jin-hai
Local dramas have been getting away from the previous norm that they should be 16- to 20-episode-long miniseries.
Starting with cable networks, more major television dramas are now experimenting with various lengths. There are dramas with four, eight and 12 episodes, and the length of each episode varies from 10 to 70 minutes.
Experts say the changing commercial market has led the productions to differentiate themselves.
In the past, dramas that were fewer than 16 episodes have had difficulties selling TV commercials. Most of dramas such as these were in fact hastily-made time-fillers between lengthy regular dramas, thus the casting of such dramas was weak and so were commercial sales.
“In the past, if we planned dramas of four or eight episodes, selling TV commercials was a big burden. But now that the overall TV commercial market is sluggish anyway, we have the leeway to experiment with dramas in various formats,” said Jung Sung-hyo, chief of the KBS drama department. “Nowadays those four-part dramas are not time-fillers anymore. Based on the story material, the length of dramas varies in a way that raises the quality of even the short dramas.”
In this context, short-run dramas -- usually having single episodes and with each episode having a different story, cast, director, and writer -- have been newly revived.
TV broadcasting channel KBS2, which has been airing 10 single-episode dramas each year via its weekly program “Drama Special,” started broadcasting “Drama Special 2017” on Sept. 3. The late night Sunday show has been garnering a 4 percent viewership.
“It was a big surprise. Not only the quality of the dramas, but I feel that young writers, belonging to the video generation have a totally different language from the previous so-called text generation. If I hadn’t tried this project with young writers, I wouldn’t have learned about the changes,” Jung added.
As the overall production of dramas is expanding with multi-channels and formats broadcasting dramas, broadcasters need fresh drama content more than ever and that forces them to search for aspiring young writers.
CJ E&M and JTBC joined the short drama market as well. CJ E&M selected 35 writers in April and has been supporting them for their debut. The 10 best scripts will be made into dramas and broadcast through tvN starting December. JTBC has been making web dramas, based on stories selected by the broadcaster’s drama writing competition.