The variety show 2 Days & 1 Night, which has been ongoing since it first aired in 2007, has the following synopsis: “The cast members take various trips throughout South Korea, including many offshore islands. While doing so, members also perform missions at a certain mealtime or point of the day to earn rewards and to avoid punishments.” The current cast members of the show are Kim Jong Min, Yeon Jung Hoon, Moon Se Yoon, DinDin, Na In Woo, and Yoo Seon Ho, and the concept of the show is to recommend various places of interest that viewers can visit in South Korea.
Occasionally, guests will make an appearance on the show, and in the most recent episode that aired on June 9, NewJeans were the special guests (apart from Hyein, who was on hiatus due to injury).
It has been some time since idols appeared on the show, and one might think that having K-Pop idols appearing on the variety series would bring a boost to viewership. However, it seems that the opposite actually happened, and it’s unclear why.
For the NewJeans episode of 2 Days & 1 Night, the viewership rating hit an all-time low of 6.1%, which was down 1% from the previous week. While viewership rankings haven’t surpassed 10% for the show in over a year, it’s still confusing to many that such a popular girl group wouldn’t bring in higher viewership.
There have been some theories as to why this might be the case, including the ongoing scandal involving NewJeans’ label, ADOR, and HYBE Labels. The negative reputation surrounding each of the companies could have made some people uninterested in supporting NewJeans on the show.
Another possibility is that viewers were instead watching Running Man, which was airing at the same time and featured popular Korean football player Hwang Hee Chan.
Still others theorize that K-Pop idols overall tend to bring down viewership on this particular show, possibly due to a generally older audience. Here are what some people are saying regarding the latest episode.
- “Wow, this is really surprising. I thought the viewership ratings would be high.”
- “It decreased by 1%. What happened at the same time that day?”
- “Who watches TV these days? Viewer ratings certainly didn’t drop because of NewJeans.”
- “If viewer ratings increase next week, it will be ridiculous.”
- “Aren’t viewer ratings usually good for episodes featuring idols?”
- “They’re cute but not funny at all…”
- “I watched the episode with NewJeans but their opponent was Hwang Hee Chan on Running Man.”
- “There are a lot of people who don’t watch variety shows, especially when idols appear.”
- “That’s because it wasn’t fun at all.”
It will be interesting to see how next week’s episode compares to this one.
Source: Instiz
