IDOL LIFE THAT STARTS WITH MILITARY WRITING

Episode 5

National Idol is a music audition program that takes as its motto a national participation audition where the debut group is decided by public voting.

This is an idol audition program produced by Musicnet that created an audition craze in Korea.

As expected from an audition on Musicnet, there was constant controversy over the devil's editing, but it actually gained more popularity due to the topicality created by the controversy.

The girl group 'Every Girl' that was born from that buzz was a huge success, and even before season 2 aired, there were already high expectations.

The trademark of the national idol is the large pyramid-shaped set that goes down from first place to last place.

A cruel set where only the rankings represent everything, but that makes the story even more interesting.

The symbolic set was now complete before the eyes of Lee Jun-hyuk, the PD of the national idol.

But today, the first day of filming, EPD's expression was unusually dull.

'There are too few people.'

Season 1 featured 100 trainees who were narrowed down to a final group of 10.

The current number of trainees for Season 2, which was intended to be a similar number, is 77. It was an ambiguous number.

'Maybe I was too greedy.'

The contract period for Everygirl, which was created in Season 1, is 2 years.

Now in their first year since debut, Everygirl is growing into a global idol group based on their success in Korea, but the two-year contract period continues to hold the group back.

The contract period was ending in one year, and each agency wanted to keep the members busy with their individual schedules in preparation for their own new group centered around the Everygirl members who had gained recognition.

So, in order to prevent such problems in advance, this season, the program was produced with a basic contract period of 3 years, plus an additional 2-year contract extension depending on the group's success, for a total contract period of 5 years.

EPD was confident.

After the splendid success of Season 1, countless love calls were sent from various agencies to send their trainees to Season 2.

We will make Season 2 a success based on our rich talent pool. We will grow the group into a global group based on a 5-year contract period.

'If we can do that, we can get the chairman's attention. There will be a lot of support from the group.'

He had grand plans.

But the moment he started talking about a 5-year contract period, the attitude of the agency officials who seemed like they would give him everything he wanted changed.

Each agency steadfastly refused to give up their ace trainees, and the backlash was much stronger than EPD had expected.

'In the first place, male idols were something that the agency risked their life for. Back then, we were blinded by the success of Season 1 and overlooked that.'

In fact, if you just call out numbers, it's possible to count a hundred or a thousand people.

But just having a large number of people doesn't mean anything.

Each agency has one or two of their own aces.

We needed those ace trainees.

The mega-planning company gave up early on. It's not a place you can persuade.