And Deliver Us from Segmentation

Abstract

With the rapid multiplication of channels, television has all but ceased to function as a shared public space. Except for occasional media events, the nation no longer gathers together. Unlike the replacement of radio by television as radio underwent a similar process of segmentation, there is no new medium in the wings to replace television that is likely to promote national political integration. No less than in the United States, the governments of Europe—once proud of their public broadcasting systems—are bowing to the combined constraints of the new media technology, the new liberal mood, the economic and political burden of public broadcasting, and the seductions of multinational corporations. Thus is mass democracy deprived of its last common meeting ground, and, if theories of technological determinism are applicable, the cohesion of the nation-state itself is in jeopardy. The case of Israeli broadcasting—now in the throes of this paradigm change—is presented in illustration.

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References

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17. Israel deviates from the BBC model in that the director-general in Britain is appointed by the board of governors, which is appointed by the queen, while in Israel, the director-general is appointed directly by the government on recommendation of the board and the relevant minister. Membership in the Israeli board is also more politicized than in Britain, where party affiliation is overlooked, at least in principle.

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21. Unified ratings have still not been installed in Israel, although this will happen very soon. Two forms of telephone surveys are now prevalent, which either reconstruct “yesterday's viewing” or ask respondents what they are viewing at the moment. The comparison in the text is between face-to-face interviewing in the 1980s with phone interviewing in the 1990s, both about “yesterday.”

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22. Elihu Katz and Hadassah Haas , “Twenty Years of Television in Israel: Are There Long-Run Effects,” Zemanim, no. 52, pp. 80-91 (Spring 1995).

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23. Ibid.

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