U.N. Body Issues Report on Study to Establish Television in Israel

The complete blueprint for the establishment of a television service in Israel–including all details from initial building of transmitters and studios to the distribution of receiving sets, programming, necessary personnel and budgeting–was released here today from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

The details are included in an official report to the Israel Government based on a special survey made last summer by a team of UNESCO experts. The survey was conducted by Dr. Henry Cassirer, one of UNESCO’s top TV experts at the organization’s headquarters at Paris, and T.S. Duckmanton, assistant general manager of the Australian Broadcasting Commission, at a request from Israel’s Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and Israel’s Minister of Education, Abba Eban;

The experts asserted in their report that there are “pressures” inside Israel for the establishment of a television service, declaring; “Young people and children take it for granted that television will come to Israel. They do not ask whether it will come–but only when.” Among the recommendations made are:

1. The establishment of an independent Television Authority, under a board of governors “comprising seven or eight Israel citizens, appointed by the Cabinet, who are prominent in the social, educational and cultural life of the community as a whole; The chairman of the board would also be appointed by the Cabinet.” The board would be a policy-making body, responsible through the Prime Minister to the Cabinet;

2. The Israeli television system would be non-commercial and educational, the latter term including instructional programing as well as programs for cultural enrichment and enjoyment, plus news trans missions, documentaries, films and other types of TV programs. Some of the programs would be in Arabic, but most of them in Hebrew.

TELEVISION CENTERS PLANNED IN JERUSALEM AND TEL AVIV

3. There would be two studios and TV centers–one in Jerusalem, another in Tel Aviv. The cost of establishing the service would amount to 5,493,000 Israeli pounds ($3,076,280) and the annual operating costs would total 2,846,000 pounds ($1,593,760). The experts estimated that the total establishment cost would be liquidated through a tax on the sale of 20, 000 TV receivers in from 12 to 18 months. There would be an additional tax on all owners of TV receivers, but this tax would not be sufficient to cover the operating costs until 58, 000 sets had been sold;

The experts ruled out ordinary commercial television broadcasting for Israel on a number of grounds; They reported they found in Israel an aversion to the use of some types of TV programming popular abroad. They stated they found in Israel “fears” of 1; “Trivial crime or sex-centered programming”; 2, Programming dominated by foreign products or foreign languages tending to undermine the establishment of an Israel culture; 3; Fear that television viewing induces passivity in a nation seeking to pull itself up by its own bootstraps”; 4, “Fear that excessive exposure to television, especially in children, will dominate life to the exclusion of other more useful or healthful activities; “

The experts found also that commercial TV might result in a “possible drain on consumer purchasing power,” by increasing demand for advertised products or services forcing “a shift in investment and importation;” However, the experts found, “the introduction of television in Israel is only a matter of time;”