Ashhong said:
Do Korean shows not do reruns?
Both Drama's and Variety programs are repeated domestically apparently, but I've only ever seen Drama's and that was on the sister cable channel. I just asked some friends back in Seoul and they say that popular Dramas and Soaps are put on during the day for housewives who missed the evening broadcast, but then never shown again. Cable channels might run a full week of a drama after a while if it was popular (Boys over Flowers was on channel 27 for about 4 months, with one episode being shown a day, every week day for that duration). Variety programs used to get repeated, and occasionally do (like 1 week later) on cable channels, but not again afterwards. (Besides, variety programs are pretty situational, in a couple of years time 1/2 of the people shown in them will mean very little to younger audiences)
Bottom line is, if MBC or the likes tried to market Running Man outside S.Korea, they would be hit hard legally unless they paid some heavy fines for use. I doubt they would want that, which is why until recently, all Korean channels have remained domestic as far as I know. (I saw in the news today that SBS are going to open a global news channel, the first in S.Korea).
Wow, I just realised I wrote a wall of text in the SNSD thread. Let me fix this by adding:
Taeyeon, like a boss.