Korean talk shows are flopping. So who’s still making them?

Jennie stars as a guest on ″You Quiz on the Block,″ a tvN talk show hosted by comedians Yoo Jae-suk and sidekick Cho Sae-ho, in an episode that aired on May 7. [TVN]

 
One of my first assignments as a rookie TV writer was to book Paul Rudd for a Korean talk show. The head producer told me to save the rejection email — it’d make good B-roll.
 
That is, if I even got a reply.
 

Paul Rudd’s agency was the only one among the non-Korean celebrities I contacted for a talk show that actually replied. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

 
It was the first of many booking refusals that would follow.
 
tvN’s “You Quiz on the Block” (2018-) doesn’t seem to have the same problem.
 
G-Dragon chose the show as his first TV appearance after making his long-awaited return to the music scene this year. Over the past few months, host Yoo Jae-suk has discussed spending with Bill Gates, a husky-voice club with Scarlett Johansson, and Coachella behind the scenes with Blackpink’s Jennie.
 
It seems everyone who’s anyone — from Hollywood A-listers to social media celebrities who’re the talk of the town — has stopped by the show. 
 
And when they do, people pay attention. Talk shows on terrestrial broadcasters averaged 0.39 to 1.79 percent viewership from March 2024 to March 2025, according to the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA). In the same period, cable's “You Quiz on the Block” stayed above 4 percent and peaked at more than 6.3 percent in January.
 
Which begs the question: How do they keep landing such big names? And for the international viewer: Is “You Quiz on the Block” the only talk show that exists in Korea?
 

Some of the guests who appeared on tvN's ″You Quiz on the Block″ include, from clockwise right, G-Dragon, Scarlett Johansson, Yoona, Rose, Park Chan-wook, Lee Byung-hun and Bill Gates. [TVN]

 
The short answer to the show’s current booking success is simple: the guests come knocking first.
 
Celebrities’ public relations teams, especially those coming from outside of Korea, reach out to production to ask for an appearance, a source with knowledge on the matter said. Industry insiders who spoke to the Korea JoongAng Daily for this piece — most of them project-based freelancers — requested anonymity to avoid jeopardizing their career prospects.
 
The media outreach might seem obvious. But in most Korean variety shows, it’s usually the writers who initiate contact and beg with guests, making “You Quiz on the Block” unusual. The show's team credits the hosts' easygoing charm and the writers' meticulous research and consideration for their guests as factors that make participants feel comfortable coming on the show.
 
The more complicated answer lies in the broader decline of talk shows in Korea. The shift has left the tvN program among the few mainstream talk shows still generating buzz on air.
 
"Talk shows aren't the flagship programs for networks anymore. People go on those shows hoping to get a boost, but even the guests don’t really see much value in appearing on them now," pop culture critic Sung Sang-min said.
 
He points to a viewership increasingly drawn to faster, more visual media — the kind that has pushed dialogue-based shows aside in favor of fly-on-the-wall reality and flashy audition programs, or driven them to YouTube.
 
 
Prime time glory to near extinction
 

Ahn Cheol-soo, far right, appears on MBC's ″Knee-drop Guru″ (2007-13) as a guest in an episode that aired on June 17, 2009. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

 
In an episode of "Knee-Drop Guru" (2007–13), host Kang Ho-dong hoists guest Ahn Cheol-soo into the air, drops him into his seat and slams the table before opening with, “I don’t know why you came on this show.”
 
"Do you think people will relate?” he asks Ahn, a medical school graduate turned software developer and entrepreneur, with mock exasperation.
 
With an easygoing smile, Ahn drew on personal yet relatable experiences to comment on social issues — a moment that analysts later said helped craft his image as an untainted political outsider and served as the launchpad for the now four-term lawmaker’s career in politics.
 
The program was one of many Korean talk shows that spotlighted celebrity life stories or catapulted ordinary people into the public eye.
 
Beginning with “The Johnny Yune Show” (1989–90), credited with introducing the American-style talk show to Korea, the host-and-guest dialogue format was once a mainstay of Korean television. 
 
Shows like “Healing Camp” (2011–16) favored slower, more reflective conversations, while others — including “Hello Counselor” (2010–19) and “Strong Heart” (2009–13) — thrived on rapid-fire banter among multiple hosts and the energy of a live audience.
 
That began to change around the mid-2010s, as the shows quickly vanished from television lineups. When KBS’s “Happy Together” (2001–20), Korea’s longest-running talk show, went off the air after 19 years, it marked a sobering moment. Newspapers called its conclusion the "end of an era."
 

A still from JTBC talk show ″Non-Summit″ (2014-17) ([JTBC]

 
The most obvious reason talk shows disappeared, according to Moon Dong-yeol, a video production professor at Woosong University, is that they became outdated.
 
"In a world saturated with dynamic, attention-grabbing videos, talk shows are a decidedly static form of content," Moon wrote in a broadcasting trend and insight publication issued by KOCCA.
 
Traditional talk shows face built-in limits, partly because of their visual constraints and the public responsibilities of broadcasters. As younger viewers became the core audience and gravitated toward faster, more provocative content, talk shows fell behind, he said.
 
In their place, a new genre of observational entertainment gained traction — programs that blend footage of celebrities’ everyday lives with studio panel discussions, such as shows like MBC’s "I Live Alone" (2013–) and SBS’s "My Little Old Boy" (2016–).
 
And just as observational entertainment programs have incorporated talk segments, talk shows themselves are evolving. Traditional formats are blending with elements of cooking shows, documentaries, current affairs and game shows to create new hybrid forms.
 
"It has become increasingly meaningless to classify these programs as entertainment, culture or documentary — the boundaries have blurred," Moon writes. "Creators are finding new ways to engage and provoke viewers."
 
 
Production woes
 

A demonstrator holds a sign outside El Capitan Entertainment Centre, where the late-night show ″Jimmy Kimmel Live!″ is staged on Sept. 18, in Los Angeles. [AP/YONHAP]

 
In the United States, the late-night talk show — a cultural mainstay of American television — has recently found itself at the center of a storm.
 
Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night program was abruptly pulled from the air after his pointed remarks about political activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Only weeks earlier, CBS stunned audiences by canceling "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert," then the top-rated show in its class, ending a decades-long franchise that had helped define the genre. 
 
CBS has maintained that the cancellation was a "purely financial decision." ABC, under mounting public pressure, reinstated Kimmel's show, but not before igniting a fierce national debate over free speech, corporate caution and the uneasy relationship between media and politics.
 
But the analyses that followed the two incidents also highlighted an important fact: that late-night talk shows' ratings and ad revenue had been declining for years, and that the format was especially vulnerable from an economic and political standpoint in an era of on-demand entertainment and polarized discourse.
 

Visitors browse booths at the 2025 Korea International Broadcast, Media, Audio and Lighting Show at Coex in Gangnam District, Seoul, on May 20. [YONHAP]

 
Korea is no exception. 
 
Television advertising revenue peaked at 4.02 trillion won ($2.8 billion) in 2021 and has been declining since, according to ad data agency Korea Broadcast Advertising Corporation. This year, the figure is projected to fall further to 2.96 trillion won, down 2.1 percent from the previous year and nearly back to 2018 levels. Its market share continues to decline as online platforms take the lead.
 
Talk shows are particularly at risk due to the difficulty of retaining dedicated viewers and growing challenges in monetization. 
 
“With ad sales becoming increasingly unstable, broadcasters now have to think about revenue structures from the planning stage,” said a producer with more than a decade of experience.
 
On the other hand, “Observational entertainment programs allow for much more natural product placement and attract far more proposals," he added.
 
Another challenge lies in guest booking, particularly for new shows, where producers and writers often depend on personal connections or past collaborations. With their minimalist format, traditional talk shows rely heavily on star power and name recognition.
 
Actor Lee Dong-wook, host of SBS’s “Wook Talk” (2019-20), said he personally reached out to his friend Gong Yoo to appear as the show's first guest. But the team struggled to book big names independently, a source told the Korea JoongAng Daily. The program, facing declining ratings and trouble attracting guests, was canceled after just three months.
 

Actor Joo Hyun-young parodies Kim Keon Hee, the wife of former President Yoon Suk Yeol, in a cold open sketch from the second reboot season of ″SNL Korea″ (2021-22) that aired on Jan. 2, 2022. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

 
And while talk shows in the United States have thrived by leaning into political commentary, the media landscape in Korea — shaped by decades of government control, press crackdowns and sweeping reforms, often under authoritarian rule — has made it far more difficult to address politics on air. That and Korea also has stricter defamation laws, according to critic Sung.
 
"Take 'SNL Korea.' The show tried to incorporate political satire, but many Korean viewers said that compared to its U.S. counterpart, the local version felt too timid, which prompted some to argue it might be better off avoiding politics altogether," he said.
 
 
Migration to YouTube
 
“With just a basic setup — a camera, a location and some lighting — anyone can create a decent looking talk show," said a producer with nearly two decades of experience in variety and talk programs. "That's why everyone who's interested, from ordinary people to established media figures, gives it a go.”
 
Product placement, a key part of YouTube’s revenue model, is also subject to fewer regulations than cable.
 
With the financial and regulatory hurdles that bind broadcasters absent on YouTube, the platform became the obvious next stop for talk shows. 
 
"They can swear. They can ask daring, hard-hitting questions," said Sung.
 

Rapper Lee Young-ji, the host of her YouTube talk show ″Nothing Much Prepared,″ pours soju, an alcoholic drink, into a pitcher in a video uploaded on July 29, 2022. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

 
On some, they also get tipsy. 
 
"It means basically, in a very second, I am going to get you [expletive] up," singer Christopher said while coaching Lee Young-ji on Danish drinking songs. The pair shared a glass of Gammel Dansk in an episode of the Korean rapper's YouTube talk show.
 
The candid conversations that come from a bout of drinking are just one example of how creators are taking YouTube's flexibility to experiment with new styles.
 
Creators on the platform don't need to aim for a broad, general audience, and can target specific subscribers, which means they can create content tailored to small but passionate fan bases, according to Prof. Moon.
 
That’s why more niche talk shows have emerged, such as "Sports Talk King," a baseball program featuring current and former players discussing the sport, along with others that focus on gaming, parenting, philosophy and more.
 

Bain, a member of the boy band Just B, appears as a guest on actor and comedian Hong Seok-cheon’s talk show in an episode uploaded on Sept. 25. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

 
But as critics like Sung remind us, broadcasters still play a crucial role in setting trends and delivering messages that resonate with society at large.
 
Actor and comedian Hong Seok-cheon, for instance, was an already established media figure through appearances on popular TV series and variety shows in the 90s before launching his YouTube talk show that builds on his queer persona. He became a trailblazing figure in Korea’s LGBTQ+ community as the first widely recognized celebrity to come out publicly as gay.
 
“Public broadcasters and cable networks still have an important role to play. On YouTube, people can watch whatever they want — but the algorithm often pushes them toward more extreme tastes," said Sung.
 
Policymakers should create an environment where broadcasters can create more original and diverse programs, he said.
 
"People are hungry for stories. There will always be a demand for them, even if they are not delivered through traditional talk show formats."

BY KIM JU-YEON [kim.juyeon2@joongang.co.kr]