My Two Cents On the Post-Fair Trade Sanction JYJ Issue

Ok so as you all should probably know at this point is that I'm a huge DBSK/JYJ fan, they got me into Kpop and shall forever be number 1 in my heart regardless of all the other rookies companies are shoving in our faces these days! I know that the Fair Trade Commission's sanction was given out two weeks ago so I probably should have talked about it then, but it's only now, after I got to think it over, that I feel like I should discuss the possibilities with this new chapter in their book.

For those of you who don't know the situation between JYJ and SM Entertainment.. Oh dear it will take too much space to type it all out now.. Basically Jaejoong, Junsu and Yoochun were members of DBSK and took SM Entertainment to court over the unfairness of their extremely long contract that gave them barely any of their earnings and made them work for basically nothing when they should have been millionaires. At the time DBSK were at the top of their career and so SM didn't want to comply, it lead to the three members leaving the group and they formed JYJ which from then on despite still selling out concerts and having great album sales, etc, JYJ have never been on a music show, variety show or talk show in Korea due to SM's power in the industry. They have only managed to be in dramas and theatre musicals. The Fair Trade Commission ordered SM and the Korean Federation of Pop Culture and Art Industry for blocking JYJ in many ways, not only the lack of tv appearances.

Wow I'm surprised I managed that.. I intended on just saying "google it".. Which you should to read up further as I gave a very brief summary!


Anyway! The sanction!


The other day I read allkpop's article, giving two of their authors' opinions on the matter. I found myself agreeing and disagreeing with both authors mainlyjennywill at times. One point in particular was about how if one network allows JYJ on one of their shows, SM will make their idol artists boycott that show. I personally think that the greatest flaw of this article is that they just talk about JYJ's possibility of appearing on music shows, which by far will be their hardest goal to achieve.

The reason that it is the hardest goal as music shows need idols. And SM Entertainment possess some of the most popular idols. PDs don't want to agitate the sole supplier of some of their most valuable stock in fear of it not being shipped to them any more. We probably will never know if SM actually said anything to these networks in relation to JYJ or if it was an unspoken threat that keeps all of the networks in fear of testing the waters. In my opinion, music shows are the ultimate goal of JYJ. They belong on music shows just as much, more, than only artists purely for their music alone.

They need to push for variety shows.


The point made by jennywill on how they are allowed on dramas as SM have less power there but "dominates in music-and-variety land" is debatable in my opinion. Music land? Yes, SM do have a huge power in Korea's music industry. Variety land? I'd say not so much..

As a huge fan of Running Man I will be using it as my main example. So how dominant is SM Entertainment in Running Man? Well it is a SBS show and SBS do have a generally good relationship with SM. However none of the main cast and former main cast are under SM Entertainment, one member, Song Jihyo, is in fact under JYJ's new entertainment company, C-Jes.

I did a tally of Running Man's guests according to the list of guests on their wiki page (with 8 people that I remembered added which were not on the list) , to date from the 1st episode to the 157th episode there has been 211 guests. 24 of those guests belong to SM Entertainment, 19 being idols. A total of 74 idols have been a guest on Running Man. A total of 132 of Running Man's guests have been non-idols, 5 of which are with SM.

That means 11.4% of Running Man's guests have been from SM Entertainment. 2 of which have been on more than 3 episodes - Jessica and Kim Sooro. 25.7% of idols on Running Man have been from SM, yet only ever had 1 group on it at the same time - TVXQ as Yunho and Changmin. YG Entertainment have had both 2ne1 and Big Bang as a whole on Running Man. JYP Entertainment have had at least over 10 of their idols on the show. The most "guested" guest is Jung Yonghwa from CN Blue (FNC Entertainment) and after him in the ranks is Nichkhun from 2PM (JYP Entertainment). Overall I think the only reason that SM have had a quarter of idol appearances in Running Man is simply because their most popular groups have a lot of members. 7 of Girls Generation have appeared on the show which makes up for 36.8% of SM's idol appearances.

So does this mean SM don't dominate the guest list? Well generally speaking, it is difficult to answer. That 11.4% might be the highest total for entertainment agencies but I can't do a tally for them all as I simply don't know a lot of the guest's agencies! When you put the simple figures together 24 does sound very small next to 211. So I guess they don't necessarily dominate.

In my opinion if JYJ/their fans/C-Jes were to put pressure on the PDs of huge variety shows such as Running Man or Infinity Challenge, that don't depend on idols and sometimes don't depend on guests full stop to get their high ratings, they could possibly manage to get on one of those shows. The wide variety of audience that watches these shows will be perfect to bring JYJ back into the spotlight and end up being a gateway back into the rest of the television world.

However I don't know if in reality that could happen the main thing I do agree with in the article was their agreement with what JYJ said about how there still is "a long way to go in the dark tunnel", but I can always keep the faith that it will all work out!!

WOULDN'T THEY NOT JUST FIT RIGHT IT?!

Note: Figures from above may not be 100% accurate, seeing as I noticed 8 people who weren't included in the guest list there may have been a few more, though I doubt the number missing would be high. Take it from me, I've watched Running Man from episode 1 onwards.