Top Drama Viewership Ratings: July 17-23, 2017

I can barely keep my head above water with all these new premieres, which means a slew of new numbers and a slew of new conclusions we can draw any given week—half the fun of looking at ratings at all is the fishbowl effect, because no matter how much we love our faves, we can’t will numbers into existence. We can watch all day, and our clicks don’t matter to the Great Aggregator, but still, there’s that fun rush when our faves are doing well despite our lack of interference, isn’t there?

But with the ever-changing landscape of dramaland, we don’t get too long to dwell on any show, and now it’s anyone’s guess as to which of these new dramas will leave a lasting impression or fade into oblivion. We had School 2017, part of the long-running franchise, premiere on KBS to mediocre numbers that turned disappointing on Tuesday, though to be fair, all the competition took a dive with the finale of My Sassy Girl (*spits and turns around in a circle three times to ward off bad spirits/dramas*) taking up first place at 11.4%.

New sageuk The King Loves saw a drop between Monday and Tuesday, but still remained in second place, while Bride of the Water God 2017 is proving unable to recreate the success tvN once enjoyed with their Monday-Tuesday timeslot. It’s not a failure by any means, but it’s not pulling in the kinds of numbers that used to be par for the course on tvN.

Over in the middle of the week, Man Who Dies to Live took over top spot at nearly 10%, followed by Reunited Worlds, which is pulling in decent-to-good numbers. For its part, Seven Day Queen is at least staying above 5%, which must be a bit heartening for the cast and crew involved.

But it’s on the weekend that we’ve got the biggest surprise: Woman of Dignity took a jump from 6.9% last week to 8.9%, which is a huge deal for JTBC. The more dramatic, the better, right?

 
Drama viewership ratings for the week of July 17-23, 2017