“49 Days” and “Royal Family” compete for 1st place on TV chart

Romantic fantasy drama "49 Days" [SBS]

SBS’ “49 Days” and MBC’s “Royal Family” have each topped different TV charts for Wednesday and Thursday primetime dramas, according to latest data on Friday. SBS’ romantic fantasy series “49 Days” saw its first win after scoring an average viewership rating of 10.25 percent on Total National Multimedia Statistics’ (TNmS) chart, though it was a slight dip of 0.1 percent compared to last week. In this week’s episodes for “49 Days,” Song Yi-kyung (Lee Yo-won) volunteers to become a housemaid for Min-ho (Bae Soo-bin) in order to find documents for her land. She gets confused when Min-ho shows interest in her, leaving his hidden girlfriend In-jung (Seo Ji-hye) furious and Han Gang jealous. Meanwhile, MBC’s “Royal Family,” the winner of the chart for the previous three straight weeks, was pushed back to the No. 2 spot after yielding an average viewership rating of 9.9 percent on TNmS this week, showing about a 1.1 percent drop from last time. In “Royal Family,” In-sook (Yum Jung-ah) forms an alliance with her rival Lim Yoon-seo of Kusung Group to prevent JK Group from filing a lawsuit against the counterpart company. Meanwhile JK’s family lawyer Ji-hoon (Ji Sung) becomes shocked about his life in the process of investigating into In-sook’s past which he happens to be involved in as well.However, on AGB Nielsen Media Research’s (AGB) poll, “Royal Family” remained the steady winner for the fourth week after recording an average viewership rating of 12.7 percent while “49 Days,” placed at second with 10.45 percent.KBS melodrama “The Thorn Birds” came last in both charts but not as far behind in figures, posting an average viewership rating of 9.3 percent on TNmS' survey and 10.05 percent on AGB’s poll.In “The Thorn Birds” Jeong-eun (Han Hye-jin) leads a happy life with her adopted mother and daughter and receives a marriage proposal by her long-time crush Young-jo (Joo Sang-uk). However Yoo-kyung (Kim Min-jung) returns from overseas and finds out Jeong-eun’s taking care of her family instead. ※ Any copying, republication or redistribution of 10Asia's content is expressly prohibited without prior consent of 10Asia. Copyright infringement is subject to criminal and civil penalties.Reporter: Heidi Kim heidikim@Editor : Jessica Kim jesskim@<ⓒ10Asia All rights reserved>