Television in Israel

Initially, there was one state-owned channel, operated jointly by the Israel Broadcasting Authority and the Israeli Educational Television.

In 1961 the Israeli government asked UNESCO to offer its opinion, which was in favor of using television for educational purposes.

[2] When Levi Eshkol assumed power as prime minister in June 1963, he started to promote the establishment of an Israeli TV channel.

In 1965, the Israeli Broadcasting Authority was established in order to distance the government from the everyday management and editorial decisions of the state-owned radio station.

[5] Yair Lapid, son of Tommy Lapid, the IBA director general from April 1979 to March 1984, claimed the IBA had the equipment for filming and broadcasting in colour for nearly a decade before putting it into use, and the introduction of colour transmissions was halted due to political pressure.

Furthermore, Israeli television bought the rights to many American and British TV series and movies (broadcast with Hebrew-Arabic subtitles).

The Israeli government considered the import of color televisions as a frivolous luxury that would increase social gaps.

According to a report in Yediot Aharonoth from January 1979[7] clients had to manipulate the switch every 15 minutes on average in normal conditions, or up to 10 times an hour when special problems occurred, in order to restore natural colours or if the picture suddenly turned black and white.

In March 1979 the IBA hosted the annual Eurovision Song Contest, and once again sent the transmission live in colour to stations around the world.

This process took more than two years and reached the last stretch on 16 February 1983 when the main daily newscast was broadcast in colour for the first time.

In 1978 the Israeli government appointed a special committee to explore the establishment of a second channel that would not be under the IBA supervision and would be financed by advertising, however the idea of commercial television was rejected by some parties in the ruling coalition.

In 1986 the Knesset started discussing the law forming the Second Israeli Broadcasting Authority, which was finally approved in 1990.

These were usually local cable television stations broadcasting illegally from private houses to subscribers, mainly films released on video tapes.

Generally speaking, most television distribution channels in Israel utilize the European Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) family of standards.

While Hebrew is the common language of communication, numerous shows and series of different genres are bought from English-speaking countries.

A similar Arabic-speaking channel started broadcasting in March 2012, after several attempts to establish it earlier failed.