Chapter 116

Chapter 116. The Arrival of a Big Spender

"CEO Do Jun-hyeok. The preview for our program is going to be released soon, and I know this is shameless of me, but I called because I have a favor to ask..."

It was PD Yoo Jong-hak from 〈Friday and Saturday Are for Singers〉.

Judging by how cautious his voice was, he seemed to be about to ask for something difficult.

Had the schedule for 〈Fri-Sat Singer〉 finally been decided?

"A favor? Of course. What is it?"

"I'm sure it's the same for you, but our 〈Fri-Sat Singer〉 production staff have poured an incredible amount of passion into this project. Looking at the internet reaction and your track record, CEO Do Jun-hyeok, I feel like the retro boom will really begin once Heenari releases the remake of 〈I Love You So Much〉. If that happens, our show will probably ride on Heenari's momentum and become a major success."

But what if 〈Fri-Sat Singer〉 aired first?

Then 〈Fri-Sat Singer〉 would create the retro craze, and 〈I Love You So Much〉 would ride on its momentum instead.

Still, only when the two were released around the same time could the 〈Fri-Sat Singer〉 songs sweep positions six through ten like I'd seen in the future.

Of course, I was aiming for number one.

"The thing is, for us PDs, creating a trend is practically a lifelong dream. It would be a shame to lose that sense of achievement. So... would you consider letting us make the first move?"

I'd rushed to Hoengseong and bought 〈I Love You So Much〉 before Yoo Jong-hak could get it.

But I hadn't planned to bury the song and never release it, so Yoo Jong-hak wasn't really losing much.

Still, that didn't change the fact that I'd known in advance it was something he would eventually want and had taken it first.

And it was true that Yoo Jong-hak had noticed the signs of a retro trend before I did.

If simply letting him go first would satisfy him, then I should concede that much.

"All right. Let's do that. I was feeling a little guilty about it anyway, so this works out. You air first, then after we check the music charts, we'll release ours around... the end of February?"

"Yes. That should be more than enough. Thank you!"

In any case, public rejection of Root Entertainment and competition programs wouldn't start turning into actual viewer behavior until late February.

If I wanted to benefit from the image of being the good idol company, releasing the song around then would definitely be advantageous.

We'd ride the retro craze and the backlash against entertainment agencies at the same time, then speed straight toward number one.

Once that happened, all the criticism about delaying the debut for months would turn into praise for Universe.

About a week after Yoo Jong-hak contacted me, the teaser for 〈Friday and Saturday Are for Singers〉 was released.

"Do you remember the dazzling nightclubs of those days? The legendary songs that lit up our Friday and Saturday nights? 〈Friday and Saturday Are for Singers〉!"

It was only a teaser, yet everyone from people in their thirties to those in their fifties, and even people in their twenties, were already excitedly talking about which songs might appear.

-Wow... Hearing old songs in twenty-first-century Korea.

┗Where else would Koreans listen to them?

-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ If 〈The Right Meeting〉 isn't on the show, I'm not watching~

┗Sir, you have to watch the show to find out whether it appears.

-Gasp! Looks like 〈Champagne Love〉 is coming! This is insane. As expected of Yoo Jong-hak, the man who knows Champagne...

As expected of PD Yoo Jong-hak.

A man who stubbornly shouted Yes when everyone else said No.

If even the teaser had this much influence, the actual broadcast would be complete chaos.

Exactly one week after the teaser aired.

In other words, around mid-February, when Jung Tae-jin had requested the first draft of the 〈Blue Moon〉 documentary, Episode 1 of 〈Fri-Sat Singer〉 aired.

The response was explosive.

They had practically gathered an all-star lineup of composers and arrangers.

Yoo Jong-hak had completely lost his mind.

The budget looked much larger than what I'd originally heard too.

Still, no matter what anyone said, the generation most active on music charts was people in their twenties and thirties.

The firepower of the fans from back then couldn't be ignored.

But neither could all the people who had been waiting for Heenari's debut.

Like I was throwing down a challenge to Yoo Jong-hak, I released Heenari's version of 〈I Love You So Much〉 on the music platforms.

It perfectly captured the attention of people who had briefly become obsessed with 〈Fri-Sat Singer〉 and forgotten about the Heenari project.

A lot of people were genuinely surprised by the idea of a rookie idol group remaking the signature song of a first-generation idol group.

The remake had already been announced before, but the timing lined up so perfectly that some people even suspected Yoo Jong-hak and I had planned it together.

Honestly, you could say we had, at least halfway.

The song itself came out great.

And once people started talking again about Billy Aaron joining Heenari for their debut stage, Yoo Jong-hak and I had practically become comrades.

Still, I wasn't going to share first place with him.

Within a few days of release, the song casually reached number ten.

Competition programs were getting criticized lately, but people also seemed to be giving us high marks for successfully debuting the group.

Late February.

That was when the 〈Blue Moon〉 documentary would start airing.

It was also when viewers' frustration toward idol competition programs would begin exploding.

And it was when Heenari's first stage would finally be revealed.

Somehow, late February had become the decisive battlefield.

As Heenari's stage drew closer, public opinion online had become even more detailed than I'd expected.

The retro craze created by 〈Fri-Sat Singer〉 wasn't limited to nostalgia for the eighties and nineties.

People had also begun reexamining idols from the 2000s.

On top of that, backlash against the recent string of abuses by entertainment companies had developed into a broader belief that there was something fundamentally wrong with the current idol industry.

In extreme cases, some people were even expressing outright rejection of currently active idols.

Which meant Heenari had the best possible conditions for debuting right now.

At a time when criticism of failed competition programs was dominating public opinion, we'd managed to debut them successfully, making them an exception.

And by using a remake, we'd absorbed people's nostalgia for the past too.

In a way, reintroducing an old song to the present also seemed to fit the original purpose of 〈Rebooting〉.

But whether people liked it or not, the scandal finally broke.

People investigated exactly why Root Entertainment deserved criticism over 〈Deep-Rooted Girls〉, organized the information, and spread it across online communities.

The atmosphere was so hostile that it felt like there might never be another competition program again.

The names of every entertainment company involved in planning 〈Deep-Rooted Girls〉 were being dragged through malicious comments.

-They had less than two months between inviting them onto the program and the first broadcast, but apparently they told them to prepare every single competition stage in advance ㄷㄷㄷ

-That's insane. Do they not fear sixteen-year-old seamstress Emma Reese?

┗Officer, this one right here.

-When the trainees complained about overwork, they said, "Well, they volunteered to participate." ;;

-???: Were you dragged here against your will?

-Jun-hyeok hyung, get out of here if you don't want to die.

T-Thanks, Tae-sik...

ZJ Group.

One of Korea's largest conglomerates, with countless subsidiaries under its control.

Its chairman, Jung Jun, was already over seventy, yet he still refused to step away from managing ZJ Heavy Industries, the group's largest holding company.

That was why people had to go to ZJ Heavy Industries rather than ZJ Group headquarters if they wanted to meet him.

Summoned by Jung Jun, Jung Tae-jin had once again traveled all the way down to Ulsan, where ZJ Heavy Industries was headquartered.

"Chairman, your health isn't good. How long are you planning to keep staying at the shipyard? Hand it over to hyung and get some rest already."

"You think just because I'm here, I'm personally ripping steel plates apart with my hands and building ships? I keep saying I want to rest too. If you really want to see me rest, go convince Tae-geon for me."

Jung Jun believed that no matter how many different businesses ZJ operated, heavy industry was still what ultimately fed the whole group.

It was undeniably an old-fashioned mindset.

But none of the executives had business instincts anywhere near his level, so ZJ Heavy Industries still remained number one within the group.

Jung Tae-geon, the eldest son and Jung Tae-jin's older brother, had spent years diving into digital businesses under the slogan that advanced technology was the future.

Yet his influence didn't even come close to ZJ Heavy Industries.

"So? How's work? Is it that fun getting to see celebrities?"

"Do you really think I'm doing this because I want to see celebrities? I have dreams of my own."

"Yeah. Sure you do."

Jung Jun slowly shifted his body as he continued talking with Jung Tae-jin.

"I've been checking MVN's schedule because I'm rooting for you, you know. But I saw it changed to some documentary with strange girls in it. I thought that Ma Cheol-seong fellow was supposed to be on. Big guy, impressive build... Did his show get canceled?"

There were limits to pretending he closely followed his son's business.

He didn't even know something this important.

Jung Tae-jin briefly explained what had happened with Ma Cheol-seong and what MVN had nearly gone through.

Naturally, he also had to explain how Do Jun-hyeok had helped them.

There was no way around mentioning him.

Even if Jung Tae-jin said that Do Jun-hyeok had simply appeared one day and magically solved everything, everything except the magic part would practically be true.

"We avoided a huge disaster thanks to Do Jun-hyeok. Come to think of it, I heard later that he was also bitten on the arm by a German Shepherd trained by Ma Cheol-seong. Apparently he was still so busy that he kept working without taking even one day off."

"What? A-a Shepherd...? Then his arm should've been torn clean off! He okay?"

"I don't think it's a prosthetic."

Honestly, Jung Tae-jin didn't know the details.

He had no idea how Do Jun-hyeok had ended up getting bitten by one of Ma Cheol-seong's dogs.

Still, one thing was certain.

Do Jun-hyeok wasn't predicting all of these incidents because some spirit had possessed him.

It was probably because of his passion for personally running around and refusing to overlook even the smallest detail.

"Not bad. That's what business is like. When a natural disaster hits, you just take it. Farmers are the same. The important thing is whether you've got enough grit left to sow seeds again next year. Ma Cheol-seong hit a dog? So what? Can't a man hit a dog once in a while?"

"You really shouldn't say things like that outside these days."

"Anyway. So Ma Cheol-seong's program almost fell apart, right? That's what you call a natural disaster. But this Do Jun-haek fellow predicted it?"

Not just Ma Cheol-seong.

He had accurately predicted the retro boom and the backlash against entertainment agencies too.

When Heenari began attracting enormous attention by riding the retro trend, Jung Tae-jin had practically dropped his jaw.

How had Do Jun-hyeok predicted all those complicated, simultaneous developments?

How had he stubbornly insisted on a retro concept?

And how had he been confident enough to visit Jung Tae-jin, the president of a broadcasting station, and tell him to cancel a competition program?

"Anyway, you like the guy, don't you? Fine, then. Marriage can wait. A business partner comes first. Didn't you replace your secretaries dozens of times because you didn't like them? From what you're telling me, I like him too. Work well together. I spent my whole life working my ass off and didn't get married until I was thirty-five. You've still got plenty of time."

"I'm thirty-eight this year."

"Ah... Is that so?"

Jung Tae-jin deliberately avoided explaining too much.

You couldn't talk about people in too much detail around Jung Jun.

Of course, Jung Tae-jin himself wanted Do Jun-hyeok to join MVN and turn it into the biggest broadcasting station in Korea.

But that greed was something he'd inherited from Chairman Jung Jun.

If Jung Jun found someone he liked, he was the type to steal even his son's business partner without hesitation and drag them down to Busan.

"How are things with your work these days, Chairman? No problems?"

"What problems would there be? Things are going well. I'm thinking of swallowing Seongdam Engineering whole."

"Seongdam Engineering?"

Jung Tae-jin knew it.

He'd known something was up.

Normally, Jung Jun was the kind of man who wouldn't care whether someone had been bitten by a dog or not.

The fact that he'd shown unusual interest in Do Jun-hyeok could only mean one thing.

He was pushing forward another massive business deal.