Israeli satirical program beats out elections results

February 12, 2009 - 9:54 AM by

The popular satirical show Eretz Nehederet

The popular satirical show Eretz Nehederet

Tuesday night’s election results extravaganza had the three main TV channels – Channels 1, 10 and 22 – bringing out all the big guns. Flashy touch tone screen displays, on site reports from every decent-sized party’s headquarters for the immediate reactions and enough talking heads to make David Byrne flee Soho.

But, what received the highest ratings that night? A special episode of the irreverent, political satire program Eretz Nehederet (A Beautiful Country), sort of a combination of Saturday Night Live and the Jon Stewart Show.

Evidently the farce of the elections results wasn’t enough of a hoot for Israeli viewers, as some 977,000 viewers (remember how small the country is) tuned into the election night special edition of the hugely popular show on Channel 2 which was broadcast an hour before the exit polls were announced at 10 pm.

And riding on such popular coattails, the Channel 2 news team won a solid rating wars victory over its competitors, as viewers just kept their TV tuned on Channel 2 as the results were announced.

According to Ha’aretz, Channel 2 had 28.2 percent of the viewing audience for its exit poll broadcast, while Channel 10 had a 12.3 percent share and Channel 1 received just 6 percent.

I started watching the results on Channel 10 because I like the easy going manner of the co-anchors Ya’akov Eilon and Mickey Heimovich. But someone at the channel came up with the totally demented gimmick of keeping the Channel 10 news theme jingle playing in the background on a loop throughout the whole broadcast. Within 10 minutes, I was ready to shoot myself, but instead, just switched to Channel 2, where anchor Yonit Levy does just fine, thank you.

According to the Ha’aretz report, the Channel 2 broadcast was its highest of the past three election campaigns. Channels 1 and 10, on the other hand, saw a drop in ratings compared to the last election in 2006. So, it’s unclear if people were more or less interested in finding out the results in previous years, or if that Channel 10 music just forced them to shut off their TVs.

But it seems apparent that rather than face the harsh realities of our political landscape, Israelis prefer to poke fun at it.

Tags: , , , , • Category: General, Israeliness, Politics 

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