The actual debut of the top 9 finalists of MIXNINE would always remain as a question due to the unclear situation YG Entertainment is providing.
According to YG Entertainment, they have been coming up with proposal and discussing with the different agencies in order to compromise for all parties. They aimed to provide a detailed ‘guideline’ by mid or if not end April. In any case, it still seemed that the final 9 members would be debuting. However, the only difference is that there could be a possibility in the change of members.
Last month, YG Entertainment’s CEO Yang HyunSuk gathered the representatives of all agencies and proposed a 3 year long contract. He proposed that an album will be released every year. Within that year, they will spend 6 months promoting the album in both South Korea and overseas, whereas the remaining 6 months, they will return back to their original agencies for other activities and promotions.
However the CEOs were not pleased and some opposed to his idea. They had also requested for him to stick with the promotional period as stated on the contract at the beginning of MIXNINE.
The original scheduled debut for the top 9 MIXNINE members was set for April 2018. The promotional period was also known to be 4 months and longer if they received good reactions from the public. The original blueprint also stated that they would also spend most of their time promoting through overseas performances and visiting at least 15 different cities world wide. However due to the low ratings of the program, the original plan has the chances of undergoing changes. The success rate for overseas performance seems to also fall short from expectation and the potential growth of the current members is also undermined by the short promotional period.
Many are saying that from the perspectives of YG, a promotional period of 4 months might be too short for success. In addition to that, there is no actual benefit for YG especially in sales and other lucrative aspects. As such, there is a chance that YG had suggested for the 3 year contract in order to raise the popularity of the debuting group, giving all the parties a ‘win-win’ situation.
According to the words of insiders, YG has been thinking of recruiting final contestants ranked 10 to 20 as possible replacements for members of the top 9 finalists who might have difficulty joining the 3 year long promotional period.
Another insider mentioned that despite the difficult situations that the debuting members are currently facing, it is unlikely that they would not debut. Since the program began ambitiously, it is not possible that YG would let their original plan to end in nothing. Furthermore as mentioned previously, YG is still thinking about the possible compromise between agencies so that promotional period could do good for everyone.
With the current situation at hand, the chances of recruiting replacement for members is high.
Currently, the debuting group consists of Woo JinYoung (Happy Face Entertainment), Kim HyoJin and Kim MinSeok (WM), Lee RuBin (Liveworks Company), Kim ByeongKwan and Lee DongHun (Beat Interactive), Song HanGyeom (Staro Entertainment), and Choi HyunSuk and Lee ByoungGon (YG). All they could do now is to wait for the development of the situation.
On March 16th, YG’s Yang HyunSuk posted on his instagram stating that he will be working hard and asked for more time to make it happen.
Hopefully, things will clear up as soon as possible.
Read More : YG Wants a 3 Years Contract for MIXNINE Opposed by Other Agencies
