MBC Drama, also known as MBC Dramanet (MBC 드라마넷) is a

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the southern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders North Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, with the Yellow Sea to the west and t ...

n channel owned by

MBC Plus MBC Plus () is a South Korean company under MBC, producing media, broadcast and telecommunication products for non free-to-air Free-to-air (FTA) services are television (TV) and radio services broadcast in unencrypted form, allowing any per ...

, specialized in drama programming. The channel is one of the oldest cable networks in Korea, founded in 1995 by CheilJedang, and has been under the control of MBC since 2001.

History

The channel started regular broadcasts as First Broadcasting System on 1 September 1995, later changing its name to Jeil Broadcasting System on 20 October. In both cases, the Korean notation was Jeil Bangsong (제일방송). At the time of the rename to JBS, it was already showing one original production, ''Seontaek! Video Box'', a program about news in the home video market. At the end of 1996, the channel became one of many to suffer from, what the

Maeil Business Newspaper The Maeil Business Newspaper (), also simply known as Maekyung (derived from the pronunciation of the Korean name) or MK, is a comprehensive daily newspaper published in South Korea, first issued on March 24, 1966. The president of the publishi ...

reported as, "the elephant in the room", referring to the downfall of certain channels. JBS stopped broadcasting entertainment programming and started airing Samgu Shopping's home shopping service, as a means of restructuring. On 19 May 1997, CJ Group renamed the channel as Dramanet, becoming a drama channel, airing Korean (including productions from future owner MBC) and foreign productions, with titles at launch including miniseries such as ''Op Center'' and ''The Langoliers''. On 26 March 2001, MBC Plus acquired two channels from CJ, Dramanet and fashion channel LOOK TV. MBC agreed CJ's proposal to acquire 46,9% in Dramanet's shares and an additional 18,6% within a year. Subsequently the company name changed to MBC Dramanet. In 2001 alone, it had shown its compliance with Korean laws airing a minimum of 30% local films. On 10 April 2020, the channel started airing reruns of '' Find Me in Your Memory'' on a delay of a few weeks from the terrestrial MBC channel. On 28 August, it premiered the third season of Chinese drama series ''The Love Equations'', to promote Sino-Korean cultural exchange.

References

Dramanet Television channels in South Korea Korean-language television stations Television channels and stations established in 1995 {{Asia-tv-station-stub