Chapter 83
“Of course it isn’t completely live. The main episodes will be broadcast from recordings, but the preliminary performances themselves will be held live in front of an audience.”
Then that’s what I thought, Myeongjeon thought. Could they really hold the preliminaries completely live? If there were 50 participating bands, even ten minutes per performance, plus five minutes of setup before and after—that would be 20 minutes per band, or 1,000 minutes in total. That was enough time for roughly one full-length TV program.
“But holding live performances in front of an audience sounds impossible too. How many bands are there…?”
“I wouldn’t know, since I’m not a PD. But it does seem certain that they’ll be held live.”
After discussing a few more things, PD Park Hwiseok ended the call with a word of encouragement. Myeongjeon stared at the ceiling for a moment.
‘Even if it isn’t completely live, I can’t begin to guess how they plan to do it.’
Even if it wasn’t a live broadcast, it still took the same amount of time. The only difference was that those 1,000 minutes would not be aired; they still had to be recorded.
‘How are they planning to pull this off?’
* * *
The first Invasion from Seoul had been neither a complete ratings disaster nor a massive hit. It had generated considerable interest within the rock scene, and people interested in music had enjoyed watching it, but that was all.
The bands discovered through the first Invasion were much the same. They had gained a degree of fame, but they had not made an impact grand enough to justify taking the imposing name “Invasion.”
Mtown, the network that had created Invasion, wondered what had led to this result. They had brought in bands with outstanding musicality and shown an interesting competition. The pool of bands was good, the competitive structure was good, the music was good, the visuals were good—in short, everything was good.
And yet it had failed commercially. What was the problem? Rather than figuring out exactly why, the executives decided to bring in someone capable of making the second installment a sure hit.
“Negative emotions are important, I’m telling you.”
PD Yoon Donguk said this while smoking a cigarette.
Who was he?
He was the PD in charge of Season 2 of the legendary audition program created by Mtown—the season that had made the program a massive hit. It had been so successful that it seemed as though the entire nation was watching it.
And the negative reaction had been enormous too. The most representative examples were the long take of eliminated trainees leaving in tears, followed immediately by interviews in which they and the other trainees gave their thoughts on being eliminated.
This had brought a recommendation from the Korea Communications Standards Commission and countless articles criticizing it: “Can they really air such a cruel program?” The things people said online—“Kill that Yoon bastard, that fucking son of a bitch,” and so on—were beyond the point of even being recorded as negative reactions.
As a result, despite the historic success of Season 2, Mtown had no choice but to remove Yoon Donguk. But for the sake of success, there were times when you had to swallow poison even knowing it was poison. The executives promoted PD Yoon Donguk, who had been working on something else, to main PD of Invasion.
“What do you mean?”
“For people to become immersed, you can’t give them only positive emotions. You have to put them in a negative situation and show that situation improving. That’s what really draws people in. In that respect, the first Invasion lacked negative emotions far too much.”
Donguk stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. Beautiful competition? A fair and righteous process? Those were all nice ideas. But you couldn’t immerse people with things like that.
“But if we hold the live performances this way, people are bound to say they aren’t fair. How are you planning to deal with that?”
That was PD Kim Jiwon speaking. Although Mtown had tapped Donguk as main PD, it had assigned Jiwon to him in hopes of curbing the main PD’s rampage, if only a little.
Jiwon thought the preliminary format Donguk had proposed was utterly absurd.
Live performances in Hongdae, Gangnam, Sinchon, and other areas. The only guaranteed audience consisted of 30 people who had voluntarily applied and been invited. The bands would perform in front of them and receive scores.
Passersby could vote as well as the invited audience, and duplicate votes would be filtered out. The score was out of five, and both the total and the average mattered. Advancement past the preliminaries would be decided by combining this score with the experts’ score, which would be based on the recorded videos.
The performances would run from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Each band would have 45 minutes, including setup time. Any band that went over would be automatically eliminated. The performance order would be determined at random.
‘There’s no way this won’t cause an uproar.’
That was what Jiwon thought. Even if duplicate votes were filtered out, how were they going to stop fans from coming and voting? What about getting stuck with the nine-o’clock slot, when no one was around? What about selecting the locations? It was a format riddled with controversy from beginning to end.
“Why bother dealing with it?”
“Huh?”
“It’s fair. Random. That’s all there is to it.”
But Donguk’s answer was, in a word, “Not my problem.” Had anyone held a knife to their throats and forced them to enter the audition? Even if the conditions were unfavorable, all they had to do was play music well.
“We ran it fairly, at random. Got a bad one? Overcoming it is the band’s job.”
“How are you going to deal with the backlash?”
“Jiwon. Do you still not understand television? Being hated means noise. If noise is generated, people watch. How can you still not understand something so obvious? You still have a long way to go.”
Donguk clicked his tongue and lit another cigarette. Jiwon coughed and waved away the smoke he exhaled. Donguk chuckled and opened his mouth again.
“The actual show doesn’t go on air until the main competition, anyway. The ones who get a bad time and place in the random draw and are eliminated? They were never going to make it anyway, and viewers will only see how pathetic they look. Because that’s all we’re going to show them.”
“…Then what about existing fans coming to vote? How do you stop that?”
“Why would we stop it?”
Jiwon stared at Donguk as if he had lost his mind. Donguk merely shrugged.
“All we have to do is randomly assign them times and places. Our responsibility ends there. Fans flocked to the venue and voted? How are we supposed to stop ‘voluntary actions’? Besides, if they have a fanbase that devoted, and that fanbase sticks around as viewers, we already benefit.”
“Bands without a fanbase are at a disadvantage.”
“That’s why we do it like this…”
Donguk tapped a few samples. They were photos of bands wearing makeup. After receiving an enormous amount of retouching, everyone in them looked handsome or beautiful.
“Once the preliminary bands are finalized, we’ll push these photos hard online and scatter them everywhere. Then hordes of crazy people who don’t know a damn thing about bands but will mumble that they like them just from looking at their faces will come swarming in. We’ll film promotional videos too. Of course, the bands will have to arrange and pay for those themselves.”
At Donguk’s words, Jiwon could feel nothing but disbelief. Were they really going that far just to generate buzz at the beginning of the show? Jiwon felt as though they understood why the Season 2 Donguk had overseen had been such a huge success—and why it had received such an enormous amount of hate.
* * *
When the format announced after applications closed was revealed, Myeongjeon felt more than troubled; he was dumbfounded. What were they supposed to do with this?
‘They’ve thrown fairness to the dogs…’
In another sense, you could call it fair. Everyone had a chance of failing. But that was only before the draw. What happened afterward? Were the people who drew a garbage location and a garbage time simply supposed to blame their luck and get eliminated?
“Isn’t this a bit much?”
Iseo’s voice shot out beside him, perfectly expressing Myeongjeon’s feelings. Her tone was incredulous, while Hyuna kept rereading the announcement to make sure she had understood it correctly.
“The internet’s a complete mess.”
Seoha showed them the online community she had been reading. The faces they had briefly seen at the studio during the promotional photo shoot had been posted online after undergoing considerable creative processing. Beneath them were comments like [This is insane], [Honestly, based on their visual chemistry, I think these girls are the best], and [This vocalist’s face is fucking insane].
“Are they really deciding based on faces before even listening to the music?”
“That’s just how that scene is.”
Iseo pretended to be an expert, as though she had once been into idols too. Wondering what she had never tried, Myeongjeon browsed through more posts. The viral marketing seemed to have worked; there were quite a lot of posts related to ‘Invasion.’
Some of them did discuss the bands’ music, but most were about their faces and their ‘chemistry.’
“Is this really okay for a band audition?”
“I heard this season’s main PD is the guy who did that idol audition. I guess that’s why.”
“Is that so…”
There were also positive reactions to ‘group sound.’ For one thing, there were clearly fan-posted messages like [Look at our girls’ visuals ㄷㄷㄷㄷ]. There were also posts asking, [Are these a girl band?], as well as posts about their music.
But one thing was clear: whether the reactions were positive or negative, there weren’t many of them. Myeongjeon couldn’t put it into an exact figure, but the overall feeling was that they were hovering around average.
“Do you think we can pass the preliminaries? Honestly, I’m not confident with a setup like this.”
“Yeah.”
The experts’ evaluations would be included too, but judging from the article, they did not seem to carry much weight. And no matter how well they played, there was nothing they could do if they drew a terrible time in a terrible area.
“But overcoming adversity makes you shine brighter. Overcoming something like this is more dramatic, so maybe we’ll get more airtime.”
Myeongjeon muttered that to himself. There was no point in thinking about it any further. The preliminary live performances would begin next week, so practice was their only answer.