'Temperature of Love' Cools Down, 'Witch's Court' Takes Top Spot in Ratings

SBS romantic drama "Temperature of Love" has slipped in the ratings. KBS2's "Witch's Court" passed it for the first time to take the number one spot on Monday's television ratings in Korea.

Previously dominant among Monday-Tuesday primetime dramas, "Temperature of Love" dropped to 6.8% and 7.9% of the countrywide audience share for the show's 17th and 18th episodes, according to Monday night data provided by Nielsen Korea. The SBS drama got significantly lower numbers compared to last week, when "Temperature of Love" scored 9.3% and 11.2% on October 9.

Soompi notes that "Witch's Court" has now overtaken it to be the top-rated drama on Monday night. The KBS show achieved 9.1% of the nationwide audience share for October 16. This was a big improvement from its October 9 score of 6.6%, but a slight drop from the previous episode, which got a 9.5%. Nevertheless, "Witch's Court" appears to have retained a good share of last week's audience, even if it may not have picked up too many new viewers on Monday.

"Witch's Court" and MBC's "20th Century Boy and Girl" both premiered last Monday without knocking "Temperature of Love" from the top of its rating perch. But now "Witch's Court" is holding strong and "Temperature of Love" appears to be cooling down.

Could it be that the romantic drama "20th Century Boy and Girl" poached viewers from the SBS program? That seems unlikely, given that the MBC show did not do very well this Monday, getting slightly worse ratings than it did last week. "20th Century Boy and Girl" only achieved ratings of 3.2% and 3.5% for its two episodes on October 16. On its October 9 debut, the show garnered scores of 3.9% and 4.2%. So it actually lost some viewers on its return Monday.

Looking at the numbers for the Seoul metropolitan audience, "Witch Court" received 8.6% while "Temperature of Love" recorded scores of 7.7% and 8.9%. Kdramapal notes that the "Witch's Court" rating is higher than 8.3%, the mean of the two scores that "Temperature of Love" got on Monday.