With JTBC’s “Thirty Nine” broadcast cancellations this week, JTBC is facing the crisis of losing to tvN.
All tvN dramas are doing so well, breaking their own highest rating records in every episode. In addition, tvN’s dominance is expected to continue for the time being as its new series “Kill Heel” is catching up with “Thirty Nine”, which was canceled for a week.
According to the release of Nielsen Korea, a rating survey company, on the morning of March 10th, tvN’s new Wednesday-Thursday drama “Kill Heel” (written by Shin Kwang-ho, directed by Noh Do-chul), which aired its first episode on March 9th, recorded a viewership of 4.4%, ranking 1st place among shows, including dramas on cable channels, aired in the same broadcasting time.
“Kill Heel” is competing against only 2 works, which are JTBC’s “Thirty Nine” and MBN’s “Sponsor”. While “Sponsor” maintains its ratings in the 1% range due to noisy controversies that occurred before its official broadcast, the strong rival “Thirty Nine” will also cancel today’s broadcast. Therefore, “Kill Heel” is expected to dominate its No.1 spot again.
Before the appearance of “Kill Heel”, “Thirty Nine” had been the only “powerhouse” of the Wednesday-Thursday drama broadcasting time zone. The great performances of the cast actresses, Son Ye-jin, Jeon Mi-do, and Kim Ji-hyun, and the calm and realistic stories touched the hearts of all viewers. Although the rating of “Thirty Nine” did fall due to the allegations of beautifying love affairs, it still maintains within the high range of 6-7%. However, the sudden broadcast cancellations have poured cold water into the good atmosphere. The cancellation on March 9th was inevitable because it overlapped the broadcasting of the 20th presidential election, but the decision to cancel the broadcast on March 10th made fans of “Thirty Nine” question the reason. As “Kill Heel” is tightening the gap with “Thirty Nine” fiercely, the viewers’ resentment is also growing.
Moreover, other tvN dramas are also showing good performance in their respective airtimes, which of course benefits tvN. First, the Saturday-Sunday drama ‘Twenty Five, Twenty One‘, which premiered on February 12th, once again broke its own highest nationwide ratings with episode 8 scoring 10.9%. At the beginning of its broadcast, ‘Twenty Five, Twenty One‘ had an intense competition with JTBC’s ‘Forecasting Love And Weather‘, but it is now leading the ratings race with a wide gap.
tvN’s Monday-Tuesday drama ‘Military Prosecutor Doberman‘, which previously topped its time slot and had its first broadcast on February 28th, is also boasting a promising rise by achieving a personal best with every new episode. ‘Military Prosecutor Doberman’ was off to a somewhat normal start with 5.3%, but after episode 4, the rating is getting close to 8%. At the same time, the No. 1 spot of Mon-Tue dramas has been handed over to SBS’s ‘Business Proposal’, but the difference is less than 1%.
Although JTBC was threatening tvN’s position as a ‘drama powerhouse’, it ended up losing its chance to rebound due to incomprehensible programming and cancellation. Attention is now focused on whether ‘Thirty, Nine’ and ‘Forecasting Love And Weather’, which are just entering the second half of their runs, will be able to reverse this situation.
