As much as I'm a Kairos promoter...I'm totally aware of it's competiton both Penthouse and Postpartum. Penthouse is touted 'the' drama of the 2020 2nd half and it has big names attached to it: cast, writer and director. Penthouse is expected to hit big (especially since it is written by TLE writer) and it follows Brahms that also did relatively well in the time slot. Postpartum teasers are looking unique and quirky and rhe drama will replace RoY which has steady 7-8% ratings.

Kairos on the other hand will have an uphill rating battle. The MBC timeslot has been empty for quite some time. I hope it has a solid story and may that bring more viewers for them. I think MBC and the cast has done their utmost best promoting the show + IC's aka KSY fans who has gone far and beyond to support KSY. I do hope their hardwork will be rewarded with a solid plot and good ratings.

Kairos had really great response on their first ep last night..it probably won't be able to compete sbs ratings but looking at the hype i think this at least will be representative of mbc drama this year....kairos has Shin Sungrok tho he has so many dramas with high ratings and people are praising the casting for good acting and their director is the director of W

I would still use the term consistent because mbc dramas this year have had extremely different genres from one another. While some don't care about genre, most do. So, yes, different people are watching. Also, I would say that mbc has fared much better than kbs and jtbc this year. Most kbs dramas were considered poor quality this year, while no one remembers any jtbc drama other than itaewon class and world of married.
Also, seeing as how well mbc does with its variety shows, most people do not have a problem with the channel itself, the dramas are just not promoted enough, and are not promoted on those variety shows as well.
The reason why mbc isn't doing better is because for the past few years, they have selected genre dramas, not ones that the entire public would enjoy. But when it did choose to air dramas the general public would like, it did do well. For example, this year's Kkondae intern and last year's special labour inspector did really well with the Korean public despite lack of international audience.
Also, even if you use the term stagnant, isn't it better having all with 3-5% than having dramas all dramas (except 1 or 2) with 1-2% ratings?

For some reason, I'm not able to reply to your other comment, so I'll just leave it here.
As you said, big names probably don't want to work with MBC, I agree with you on that, but just till that. To call the shows mediocre in my opinion is not right. Sure kbs has a problem right now with the script selections but frankly speaking, in my opinion, mbc had the best scripts this year, most of their dramas were really good. Maybe people who prefer big names may not watch them, but others who don't, all have good things to say about them. In fact, even love with flaws, which is mbc's lowest rated drama this year(probably because of all the scandals before it), was good and probably had one of the best written homosexual characters in dramas.
Also, big names do not equal to quality shows. Yes sure, they get the hype but honestly half the time, one can't help but wonder if they deserved that hype.

I'm not sure if it's helpful to compare MBC with the cable channels. It goes without saying that jTBC and TVN have bigger budgets, bigger names and more prestigious shows. MBC should be compared to its terrestrial counterparts; and, as far as I can see, in 2020 all three channels have had roughly the same quantities of ratings successes and failures, good and bad shows, and big and not so big names. In fact, with cable shows getting fewer viewers and more criticism, the narrowing gap between cable and terrestrial makes it all the more important not to generalise about either.

Moreover, awards and popularity polls don't always accurately reflect quality, ratings or the amount of buzz generated when the show was first broadcast. For example, Kkondae Intern and Special Labour Inspector Jo might not have topped any polls or won any awards, but they did get the highest ratings among all the dramas in their respective time slots for many weeks. I was also surprised at the number of people commenting positively on Kkondae Intern on Naver, more so than for, say, TVN's Unfamiliar Family.

I wasn't going to reply back to you seeing as how you aren't ready to accept opinions, but your last comment about only mediocre actors working on these channels kind of took me by surprise. Please do convince me how people like Cho yeo jeong, Seo ji sub, shin ha kyun, kim dong wook, joo ji hoon, yoo in na, shin sung rok, ha seok jin, oh na ra to name a few are "mediocre actors"?? These people are more famous and talented than most people on other channels, and they get better ratings despite being on mbc and kbs than other channels.
And I'm not saying that hyped dramas don't deserve their ratings, I'm saying that they do not necessarily deserve it more than others. Take record of youth for example, it had high ratings and was hyped but honestly till date I have hardly read any overall good reviews for it, mostly everyone thought it fell flat, whereas brahms had lower ratings than it but was loved overall, similarly kairos had amazing reviews for its opening week yet had lower ratings, but no, I'm not saying that it didn't deserve its ratings, I'm saying that the others deserved it as much as it did.
But why am I bothering? You are probably going to reply with mbc and kbs are flops all over again, which I rather not get into. But, go ahead keep judging them based on their numbers rather than quality.