Tel-Chai Nation

It's just as well. Here's why:

A staple of Israeli television since the inception of digital multi-channel broadcasts more than 20 years ago, CNN will soon no longer be seen in Israel. Satellite broadcaster YES announced Wednesday that it is dropping the station, due to high costs. No replacement station has yet been named. CNN broadcasts on YES will end on December 31.

CNN, once considered the standard in international cable news, has been losing ground in recent years to competitors, like Fox News (which is available in Israel). Like in the U.S., Fox News has higher ratings among YES customers than CNN does, even though Fox News is a “premium” channel that customers must pay for above the cost of their subscription.

Industry insiders said that the satellite broadcaster felt it was paying too much to feed CNN to local customers, a situation that came about because of the original contract Israeli broadcasters signed with CNN some two decades ago; the price started out high and remained so, they said. In a statement, YES said that it was examining replacement services, but that in the meantime customers who wanted to watch an international news service in English could choose from a wide variety of stations, including Fox News, Sky News, BBC World, Bloomberg, and English language news services from France, China, and Japan.

Last year, HOT, the cable television provider, dropped CNN over a similar contract dispute. HOT replaced CNN with the much more reasonably priced MSNBC.

I'm sure the fact that not many people wanted to watch all their vulgar anti-Israel propaganda is one of the reasons why it became so costly to air here. We can always find them on the internet anyway, and don't need to waste so much money just to watch it on the boob tube.

Labels: Asia, communications, Europe, Israel, msm foulness, United States