Journalists and technicians of the first public channel, they gathered on tuesday night to sing national israelian hymn, a few minutes before the permanent cessation of the programme of IBA
Scheduled a long time ago, the closure of the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA), Israel’s public broadcaster, finally took effect on May 10th. It has been replaced by a new broadcasting organisation.
IBA staff and journalists were warned only at the last minute that programmes would go off-air. On Tuesday evening, Geoula Even, the presenter of “Mabat”, a key programme of the leading television channel, announced in tears that this was the last edition.
After broadcasting for 49 years, the IBA ceased transmitting on Wednesday morning, 5 days before the date originally scheduled. Only about twenty employees remained on the premises to oversee the re-transmission of the Eurovision Song Contest. The 8 public radio stations broadcast only music. The new public broadcaster, called PBC (Public Broadcasting Corporation) or Kan in Hebrew, took over on May 15th.
The demise of the public broadcaster has been discussed by the Israeli government since 2014, when a bill was passed to replace the IBA, considered to be old-fashioned and too expensive by the then Minister of Communication.
Since then however, the IBA’s closure has been postponed several times, becoming a test of wills between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Minister of Finance, Moshe Kahlon. Mr Netanyahu wanted to backtrack on the reform he had initially supported. An agreement was finally reached in March thanks to a complicated arrangement concerning the new organisation’s news department. According to AFP, many Israeli commentators claim a key factor in the long drawn out crisis in public broadcasting has been: “Benyamin Netanyahu’s determination to control news output”.
Sources: AFP, Satellifax, i24News, France 2 Moyen-Orient, ESCToday
