Lee Hyo-ri Left, Lee Young-ae Refused, Hit Shows Canceled: KBS Is Constantly Struggling
KBS’s variety programs are struggling one after another, drawing attention.
A struggling case is the KBS music talk show “The Seasons – Lee Hyo-ri’s Red Carpet” (hereinafter referred to as “Red Carpet”). “Red Carpet” will end at the end of this month as scheduled season by season,” KBS announced. The final recording will take place on March 26th and the program will end on the 29th.
As a result, Lee Hyo-ri will leave the show after two months as its solo host. “Red Carpet,” the fourth season of “The Seasons,” drew attention as Lee Hyo-ri’s first program as a solo MC. It ranked second on the talk show list among all KBS programs in the first week of January. Its number of viewers on the Korean streaming service Wavve nearly tripled in the first week of January, compared to the previous season.
The show’s guest lineup was also spectacular. BLACKPINK’s Jennie, (G)I-DLE, Uhm Jung-hwa, Cha Eun-woo and LE SSERAFIM were added to the list one after another. However, viewership remained in the 1% range, making people sigh.
KBS said it plans to continue the next season with another MC. Some expressed concern over who would be the replacement and how burdensome the successor would be.
On March 8th, KBS’s plan for Lee Young-ae’s own talk show also reportedly failed. The talk show was expected to be the first show in which Lee became the MC after 33 years since her debut. However, KBS announced, “It is true that the production team has held several in-depth discussions with Lee about the launch of the talk show. It was finally canceled due to difficulties in scheduling and composition.”
Earlier, KBS abolished hit variety programs such as “HK Coin” and “Problem Child in House” due to financial deterioration caused by separate collection of license fees. A series of program abolition and unilateral notification of host departure caused KBS to be struggling.
