Don't let your dreams go up in smoke The Rating On The Wall: Israel Television Has Exploded GAIL LICHTMAN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS `,••,,,, s".: - , 0 -- , ,,„ . ,N, , , Stop sniking today ' '' : ■ \ ' ,,,,,4,‘,. ■ ,, ' ,,-,, , ■ . NA, , ' ,. ' . ' AMERICAN t LUNG ASSOCIATION • OF SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN 18860 West Ten Mile Road, Southfield. 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At Inkster 353-7890 nce in the not so distant past, Israel had only one television station — the government-operated Is-. rael Broadcasting Authority. Back in those days, if you stood outside on a warm summer night, when windows and doors were left open, at the time the night- ly news was broadcast an almost surreal scene would emerge. From every home on the block, the eerily flickering image of newscaster Haim Yavin could be seen casting its bluish pallor in living room after living room while his voice reverberated throughout the neighborhood. We were a united nation, with only one choice in TV viewing. We all watched the same programs, and at work and at school we dis- cussed what we had seen the night before, confident that our colleagues knew exactly what we were talking about. But thex90s changed this. First came cable TV with a choice of some 40 stations. Approximate- ly 750,000 Israeli households in a country of 5 million signed on. Then, in November 1993, Chan- nel 2, Israel's first homegrown commercial television station, was established. No longer were all Israelis watching D3A. Suddenly we had choices — American talk shows, German game shows, Spanish soap operas, CNN, BBC, MTV, Sky, Turkish TV, Russian TV, two rival Hebrew-language news- casts — the possibilities seemed endless. Israel had joined the global village. A recent poll found Israelis watching more CNN news dur- ing a 24-hour period than cable subscribers in any of the other 210 countries where CNN is broadcast. A whopping 28.2 per- cent of Israeli cable subscribers tune in to CNN at least once a day. But it was the advent of Chan- nel 2, more than cable, which re- ally changed Israeli viewing habits. Here was a commercial station striving to support itself through advertising revenues. Suddenly, ratings became the key word in television programming. No longer could the stations be impervious to their viewers' pref- erences. Market shares, audience demographics, etc., were in. Ad- vertisers demanded to know these things. In the absence of people me- ters (the famous little black box- es of American television ratings), y is subject to debate depending on The Israeli version of "Wheel of Fortune." duct telephone polls and IBA hired Consu-Shiluv. And lo and behold, the pollsters found that Israelis across the demographic board prefer local, Hebrew-lan- guage productions over foreign programs, no matter how inter- nationally popular the imports are. Gallup found that local pro- grams in Hebrew make up 92 percent of the top 40 shows. So, with Channel 2 just gear- ing up and its franchisers reluc- tant to invest in big-budget `The public votes with the remote.' — Yaron Ezrahi productions, Israel ended up with the year of the talk shows. Talk is cheap and talk shows all the more so. No expensive on-loca- tion shoots. No scenery. No cos- tumes. All you need is a host and a couple of chairs. A dozen talk shows currently grace Israel's airwaves weekly. The second big hit of the past year has been game shows, more expensive than talk shows but still way below dramas. There are Israeli versions of "Wheel of For- tune," "The Dating Game," "Let's Make a Deal," and "Hollywood Squares," plus a few homegrown varieties. Viewing of the once dominant IBA nightly news dipped from a mighty 33 percent of the viewing audience in March 1994 to 19 percent by October. It has generally been accepted that Channel 2 has emerged as whether one looks at Gallup or Consu-Shiluv polls. .7, Nevertheless, Channel 2 is ahead in popularity with all age groups except the over-55 set. Those most pleased with Chan- nel 2 programming, according to Gallup, are the young (12 to 17) and those with a high-school ed- ucation or less. The fact that the game shows are less than intellectual fare and that many of the talk shows im- itate the worst sensationalism of their American counterparts, plus the overall focus on the young, has resulted in claims that Israeli television is pitching itself to the lowest common denomi- nator in the race for ratings. Coverage of the Dizengoff bus bombing seemed to confirm this view. Unprecedented gruesome footage of the carnage was broad- cast on both IBA and Channel 2 news in apparent efforts to cap- ture the larger audience share. But the stations themselves deny this. Channel 2 points with pride to such programs as "Fact," a "60 Minutes"-style documen- tary and "Gov Night,' a more highbrow talk show. IBA director Yair Stern says the channel is aiming for quality plus popularity. In line with this, IBA recently screened "Kastner," a locally made historical drama dealing with the Dr. Rudolph Kastner libel trial in the 1950s. Now that just about everyone in Israel seems to have been in- terviewed during the past year on one of the talk shows, what does the future have in store? In the short run, fewer talk shows. But don't hold your breath in anticipation of highbrow fare. Their place is being taken by lo- cal soap operas. This should come as no surprise given the success of such foreign soaps as "The Young and the Restless," "The Bold and the Beautiful," and the various Spanish telenovellas. "Antonella," for example, which ran for most of last year, was, at its height, receiving ratings as high as the IBA nightly newscast. No fewer than five Israeli soaps are either in production or about to go into production. One, "Ramat Aviv Gimmel," which is being filmed by G.G. Studios, is set to be marketed abroad under the English-language title "Mediterranean Affairs." Italy, Spain, Mexico and Argentina have already bought the still-to- be-completed soap.