After finishing broadcasting, "ProduceX101" (Mnet) sparked controversy for many days in a row.

"ProduceX101" has recorded the lowest viewership rating in the whole "Produce 101" series. The show failed to attract audiences when its average viewership rating is even lower than that of its predecessor "Produce 48". The show's final episode records the highest rating of 3.9%, however, this is still a poor achievement compared to the final episodes of season 1 with 4.4% and season 2 with 5.2%. Like the previous seasons, topics such as "malicious editing" or "PD-pick" erupted, but "ProduceX101" could not become the extremely hot topic compared to previous seasons.

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However, it is not an exaggeration when saying that this season has the most controversies ever. Now, the scandal surrounding "ProduceX101" has yet to be settled, from the accusation of voting manipulation to the collective lawsuit.

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Through the final live broadcast on July 19, the show "ProduceX101" has debuted an 11-member group named X1 including Kim Yohan, Kim Wooseok, Han Seungwoo, Song Hyeongjun, Cho Seungyoun, Son Dongpyo, Lee Hangyul, Nam Dohyon, Cha Junho, Kang Minhee, Lee Eunsang.

The problem is that the number of publicized votes of the trainees is being criticized as abnormal. The public has raised from small allegations such as "the number of votes is deceitful" to serious ones like "rankings manipulation". Many questionable points given are that "ProduceX101" recorded the same number of votes as season 2 - that has a big difference in viewership ratings and popularity; the difference in the number of message votes of trainees was constantly repeated. The suspicion about the result manipulation around the survival show "Idol School" and the previous series "Produce 48" by Mnet in the past has come up again. Currently, the public's trust in the television station is bottoming out.

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On July 24, through the official SNS, the production crew of ProduceX101 announced their official stance regarding the voting manipulation controversy. Earlier, the production crew consistently kept silent in face of strong accusations about the suspicion of manipulating votes, but when the situation became more severe, they gave an apology.

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The production team explained, "After the check, there's no problem with the final positions, including the 'X', but we found out errors when calculating and conveying the total number of individual votes announced in the broadcast. When re-checking the rankings, the production team rounded the vote share to the second decimal place, and announced the number of votes calculated by this vote share in the live broadcast." In other words, the production team admitted that the actual number of votes and the announced counterpart were different. "ProduceX101" reiterated, "There's no change in the rankings", but the doubts were still there despite the official stance of the production crew.

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Congressman Ha Tae Kyung of Bareunmirae Party asserted that the prosecutors' investigation was required and stated, "The voting fraud case of 'ProduceX101' is listed as illogical recruitment and employment fraud." Media outlets have also made strong statements regarding this matter. The Korea Communications Standards Commission has received hundreds of the people's complaints with the same content. This controversy can hurt all the trainees who participated in the program and all the audience. It seems that there needs to be a more satisfactory explanation than the explanation given by the production crew of "ProduceX101" so that the audience can accept it.

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Newsen = Reporter Lee Min Ji /oing@newsen.co.kr

Photo = Mnet

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