Frank Kogan

Ha! When I initially saw the sentence "Crayon Pop reveal they aren't afraid to confront agency," I interpreted the word "agency" in the cultural-studies sense. So I didn't think "talent agency" but rather (Merriam-Webster def'n 2): "the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power," as in "K-pop performers are not simply puppets, and K-pop fans are not passive receptacles, but rather exhibit a certain amount of agency (twisted little fucks though they be)." So I took the sentence to be saying that Crayon Pop were confronting the issue of agency. Which maybe they are.

I don't assume the show's producers had to stage the confrontation (though that's not impossible). A simpler explanation is that Chrome Entertainment (previously unknown to me) chose the members of Crayon Pop for demonstrating a certain amount of fire, and MBC has an eye for drama.

In November 2001, in the two weeks before Pink's Missundaztood was released, I was inundated with promo copy from Arista detailing all of the confrontations she'd had with label prexy L.A. Reid. ("The president of the label took me out to dinner to try and convince me to take etiquette classes, so I sat there and just ate with my hands.") I doubt that the confrontations were pre-planned, that Reid originally signed her with the understanding that she was going to demand a shift in direction and a choice of her own producer after her first LP. Rather, he eventually realized he wasn't going to win the argument (or, anyway, that winning wouldn't be worth it), and determined to make the argument a selling point.

Not that an agency or a TV producer wouldn't stage confrontations, but my guess is that in this instance they don't need to. Depends on the personalities.