MBC’s ‘Hangout with Yoo’ topped the brand-reputation rankings for variety shows in May 2026.
The Korea Corporate Reputation Research Institute said May 3 that it analyzed 92,227,444 pieces of brand big data for 50 popular domestic variety programs collected between April 3 and May 3, 2026. The institute ranked ‘Hangout with Yoo’ first, ‘I Live Alone’ second and ‘Unknown Legend’ third. Overall brand big-data volume rose 5.99% from April’s total of 87,015,090.
By sub-indicator, the institute found brand participation fell 1.63%, brand issues rose 13.57%, brand communication rose 13.74%, brand spread rose 6.36%, and brand consumption fell 5.21%.
‘Hangout with Yoo’ posted a brand-reputation index of 6,195,861, up 13.81% from 5,443,809 the previous month. Its scores included a participation index of 390,438; a media index of 994,596; a communication index of 2,307,503; a community index of 1,947,268; and a viewing index of 556,056.
‘I Live Alone’ jumped 38.68% to 5,240,590, showing a marked rise. ‘Unknown Legend’ climbed 25.40% to 4,300,421. ‘You Quiz on the Block’ reached 4,007,936 (+13.65%), and ‘Running Man’ logged 3,667,804 (-4.71%). Other programs that made the top 30 included 2 Days & 1 Night, My Little Old Boy, Radio Star, National Singing Contest and Men Who Do Housework.
Koo Chang-hwan, director of the Korea Corporate Reputation Research Institute, said link analysis for ‘Hangout with Yoo’ showed strong associations with words such as “thankful,” “fun” and “active.” Keyword analysis highlighted Yoo Jae-seok, Yang Sang-guk and Byun Woo-seok. He added that the positive-to-negative sentiment ratio was very high — 92.30% positive.
The brand-reputation index is calculated by extracting brand big data, categorizing consumer behavior into participation value, communication value, media value and social value, weighting those categories and then combining them to produce the final score.
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