According to the proposal, the corporation will first be offered for sale, but if it does not succeed - it will be closed • The corporation: "The importance of public service is not absent from the eyes of the ministers" 

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  Yossi Aloni

The end of public broadcasting? Israel Today has learned that this coming Sunday, the Ministerial Committee for Legislative Affairs will receive a bill to privatize the public broadcasting corporation of MK Shlomo Karai and MK Etty Atiyah of the Likud. 

According to the bill, the corporation, for its variety of television and radio stations (here 11 and Network B), will be offered in a tender to private parties, but "if no one is found who wants to buy them, then within a certain time the corporation will close and the flow of public money will stop." The original proposal, which was submitted to the Knesset in early May, also included the privatization of IDF waves, but now this issue has been omitted from the proposal that will be submitted to the committee on Sunday. 

The Broadcasting Corporation began broadcasting in 2017, instead of the Broadcasting Authority, and its budget amounts to about NIS 800 million - all from public funds, which comes from two sources: a government budget and the collection of a car radio fee. "The purpose of the bill is to increase competition in the communications market and encourage a free market in this area," the bill's explanatory statement read. "The cancellation of public broadcasting in Israel will be a first step on the way to achieving these goals. There is no reason for Israeli citizens to continue to finance this unnecessary broadcast out of their own pockets."

It was also noted that in the current era, "the claim that public broadcasting is required to address the existing multiculturalism in Israel - is no longer relevant. In addition, despite a particularly large budget, the broadcasting corporation does not offer unique multifaceted content, as evidenced by ".

It should be noted that in early January the corporation demanded to stop publishing its rating data, after deciding to retire from the rating committee on the grounds that "this measurement is not appropriate for the corporation and does not reflect the total digital viewing data." It should be noted that other public broadcasters in the world, including the British BBC, use the same rating measurement system. About a month ago, Yaron Dekel resigned from directing Friday's news edition at the corporation, after unofficial reports that the edition received a particularly low rating of less than 2%.

The corporation's CEO Eldad Koblenz was recently sharply criticized, in light of his decision to remove Erel Segal and Kalman Liebskind's current affairs program "Kalman and Segal" from the broadcast, "because it does not provoke a dialogue." From the screen at the end of the month.

The bill is expected to provoke intense controversy in the ministerial committee, headed by Justice Minister Avi Nissenkorn and has 14 members. At least half of the ministers, who were members of the Bnei Gantz bloc in the last election, are expected to oppose the proposal. Four Likud members of the committee are expected to support the move, and a question mark is hovering over the remaining three - Yaakov Avitan of Shas, Yaakov Litzman of Torah Judaism and Rafi Peretz of the Jewish House. 

The initiator of the bill, MK Shlomo Karai, said: "The communications market is an archaic market, full of insane regulations. There is no justification for public broadcasting, especially not in the insane amount we pay for it - and even in a difficult economic period. "The corporation serves a small and closed elite, does not supply the goods, so the Israeli public will benefit much more if the corporation becomes private, or alternatively the market will be completely open without it."

"Original work"

The Broadcasting Corporation stated that "Here" is confident that the importance of public broadcasting, on weekdays and in emergencies, is not absent from the eyes of the ministers. The corporation is the largest content body in Israel and provides the public with independent, commercial interests "TV channels and a digital division. The corporation invests millions of shekels in original Israeli work, creators, actors and all the functionaries who make a living from it."