Nostalgia Sunday – Not the 9 o’clock news
Filed under: education, Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Movies, News, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture, Technology, tv
Ladies and gentlemen, history was made on the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA) nightly newscast at 8 minutes to 8 this evening when the Israel Broadcasting Authority announced that the Israel Broadcasting Authority nightly newscast would be broadcast at 8 minutes to 8 this and every evening henceforth. Earth shattering, I know, and only 20 years after it would have actually been a significant announcement. Coming as it does, in 2012, it is another in a string of dopey decisions made over the years. Let’s take a look back on a few, shall we?
First, some facts: it is true that Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, opposed introducing television into the new State of Israel. It is also true that television made it through the back door as an instructional tool in 1966, when Israel Educational Television (IETV) began broadcasting under the auspices of the Education Ministry, with programs initially received by 32 schools.
Needless to say, broadcasting was in black-and-white as the technology was less expensive and in keeping with the authorities’ frowning upon the whole affair. According to the Wikipedia entry on Television in Israel, “Arnon Zuckerman, the IBA director general from 1973 to March 1979, cites Golda Meir (Israel’s Prime Minister 1969-1974) saying about color television, ‘It is so artificial, I know it from America. There is no need for this’.”
No need, perhaps, but by the mid-seventies you couldn’t get black and white equipment so by dint of circumstance, Israeli consumers were only able to buy color televisions while IBA was forced to purchase color-enabled gear. You would think that Israel would have then naturally segued into color TV broadcasting and viewing… but you would be wrong.
Please note the underlying lunacy in this cut-and-dried account of what actually happened, again from Wikipedia: “According to Yair Lapid’s biographical book about his father, Tommy Lapid, who was the IBA director general from April 1979 to March 1984, the IBA had the necessary equipment for filming and broadcasting in color for nearly a decade before putting it into use; however the introduction of color transmissions was halted due to political pressure and threats of industrial actions.”
“Industrial action” refers to IBA technical staff who felt threatened by the introduction of video technology and color video at that. “Owing to this state of affairs, newscasts and other regular productions were filmed using black and white cameras; however many special productions ordered from private Israeli studios (in particular the Herzliya Studios) were filmed and taped in color.”
Then things got really crazy. “The Israeli government frowned upon the increasing import of color TV sets, which it considered a threat to Israeli economic stability and an improper pursuit of luxury, which allegedly increased social gaps. Therefore, the government ordered IBA and IETV to broadcast entirely in black and white and erase the color from any color-taped telecast.”
I know. IBA is beginning to sound like that movie Pleasantville.
So, with the great technical ingenuity that would serve Israel so well decades later as the “Start-up Nation”, IBA introduced the mehikon — literally, the “eraser” — which interfered with the color signal and triggered a “color killer” mechanism. And with the even greater ingenuity that would serve Israel so well decades later as the “Nation of Upstarts”, the average Israeli simply went out and purchased a color television set equipped with an anti-mehikon device that would restore the color signal.
It wasn’t perfect. “According to a report in Yediot Aharonoth from January 1979, the client had to manipulate the switch every 15 minutes on average in normal conditions, or up to 10 times an hour when special problems occurred, in order to restore natural colors or if the picture suddenly turned black and white.” But it served the public well enough until 1981 when the government allowed IBA and IETV to film productions in color.
Did I say 1981? I meant 1983 when the first IBA nightly newscast broadcast in color, because it took another two years to arrange for a settlement with the technicians’ trade union, who were demanding higher salaries for operating color equipment.
“Lapid also mentions that the anti-mekhikon system cost IBA 180 million Israeli lira yearly (approximately 64 million Israeli new shekels in 2011 prices).”
But the idiocy doesn’t end there. in 1990, the government approved the establishment of a Second Authority for Television and Radio and Channel 2′s Israeli News Company began broadcasting a nightly newscast in 1993. At 8′o clock in the evening. Which brings us to another dumb IBA decision.*
Imagine, if you will, that you are in charge of a nightly news broadcast with — get this — a 100% audience share!!! You have gravity and authority. For 25 years without a break, the entire country automatically turns to your show after dinner at 9 o’clock at night. Suddenly, a untried, untested competitor appears with an 8 o’clock news broadcast. What do you do?
Well, if you’re IBA, you move your news broadcast, a national mainstay whose nightly viewing is an ingrained habit, to 8 o’clock, too, and lose your market share. They still haven’t recovered from that self-administered shot in the foot.
Which bring us today’s news about the 8 minutes to 8 thingie. Haaretz reports that, in true IBA fashion, a tussle is in the works between management and staff. “Negotiations have been underway in recent weeks. The workers’ committee claims that the changes, including some in human resources, were made without any consultation. The broadcasting authority, however, says the committee is making demands unconnected to the channel changes – salary levels, for example.” Well, it’s nice to have traditions.
Here are few Mabat nightly newscast openers from yesteryear…
*Some of IBA’s other slights against the public include bellyaching about salaries and how they’re under threat of being closed down, the lack of imagination that led them to sue the Israel Olympic Committee for misappropriation of IETV’s Kishkashta character instead of turning it into a win-win by granting the rights and bringing the beloved comic cactus international fame, plus their tendency to imply that in a national emergency they will simply shut off the tap and we’ll all be forced, once again, to watch IBA while sitting in our sealed rooms. But the real offender is the annual television tax, known in Hebrew as ha-agra — or as I call it, the agrrraaauuuggghhh! — which is supposed to fund quality programming. Here, you might compare IBA to the Ricky Gervais movie, The Invention of Lying, about a fact-based existence where even the most major of movie productions feature dour seated personages reading aloud from books about historical events. But that’s supposed to be a joke, kids, not reality.
Searching for a cure to insomnia the Israeli way
Photo from Israel21c
Haaretz recently published an article about an Israeli website they dubbed “Dr. Google.” The site is called Treato; its goal is to aggregate health and medical information, in particular on drug side effects, in a single place rather than forcing sufferers to wade through thousands of hits on Google, many of which are either irrelevant, unverified, or thinly veiled ads for the drug manufacturers themselves.
I had a chance to speak with the Treato guys last November for an article on Israel21c and their aim, as Elvis Costello might croon, is indeed true. The site, which is backed by the former CEO of Israeli powerhouse Commtouch and some $9 million in venture capital, covers some 13,000 conditions and 11,000 medications. There are 800 million patient discussions indexed, coming from 23 million patients. Treato then analyzes and prioritizes all that data, so you don’t have to.
When I was writing the article, I decided to give Treato the personal touch. I’ve suffered from insomnia most of my life. People who don’t sleep have a lot of extra time on their hands, which often translates into trolling discussion boards in the wee hours of the night. Everyone has their own treatment successes or failures, and they’re all ready to share, push and proselytize as if their solution is just on the cusp of curing the rest of us.
There are the magnet hucksters, the CBT wonks, the magnesium machers, the anti-chocolate crowd, the acupuncture/homeopathy/chiropractor/melatonin/meditation groupies and, of course, an unending stream of recommendations for this or that sleeping pill or anti-depressant.
I’m not putting any of these true believers down – on the contrary, I’ve tried the gamut of proposals and some have actually provided some relief. It’s just that Google is an unforgiving intermediary. She doesn’t tell you what ranks higher and what the potential side effects might be. Treato does.
You still have to work it. A search on Treato for “insomnia + not sleeping” resulted in 33,000 comments, from both expected sites (anxietyzone.com, askapatient.com, healthboards.com) and some surprises (breastcancer.org, autismweb,com, schizophrenia.com). But at least I don’t have to open each site one at a time; Treato puts it all in one place.
Treato launched in 2011, is aiming for revenues of $10 million this year, and hopes to break even in 2013. It’s not a play likely to be picked up by Mark Zuckerberg or other social media moguls. “People don’t like to talk about anti-depressants on Facebook,” Gideon Mantel, the company’s CEO says.
In the meantime, I’ll keep using Treato. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll discover that pickles and ice cream are the perfect cure for insomnia. Either that or I’m pregnant.
Apping the Omer
The "Sefiros" iPhone app
From the second day of Passover until the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, observant Jews perform a ritual called “counting the Omer.” Between those two dates, there are 49 days and, during evening prayers, one is commanded to say a few special phrases to mark each day (the “Omer” refers to a measure of barley offered as a sacrifice during Temple times).
There are Kabalistic connotations as well as historical/mythological ones: it’s said that a great plague that killed 24,000 followers of the first century CE luminary Rabbi Akiva abated on the 33rd day of the Omer. In Hebrew, it’s known as L’ag b’Omer, or more popularly in Israel, the “night of the bonfires” (ask any kid toting a rotted old bathroom door and you’ll quickly get the gist).
Counting the Omer is not terribly difficult in and of itself, but there’s a built in trick: if you miss counting for just a single day, you can’t say it with a blessing again for the remainder of the 49 days. For the frummer among us, that can be a big deal. It’s like Survivor or Big Brother, except the last one standing doesn’t win a million bucks, just the undying gratitude of a possible deity.
I can tell you that, when I was more religious myself, there wasn’t a single year that I got through until Shavuot intact. So I probably would have been delighted to have discovered a new iPhone app called “Sefiros” (that means “counting”) which is here to remind you to, well, count.
It’s really a very simple app: you set a timer and the app beeps to tell you it’s time to say the prayer. Sure you could do that with your regular iPhone calendar…but would you? A dedicated app with a repeating alarm that expires after 49 days is just that much easier.
To make it a bit more robust, the Sefiros app lets you add “action alerts” to your reminders; you can set them be with “with God,” “with others,” or “with yourself.” You can even reach out for a little social media feedback and post your success to Twitter. “Hey fellow frumsters, I made it to day #29. Nya, nya, nya.”
Not sure when sunset is? Never fear, Sefiros checks the time using GPS. The blessing you’re supposed to say is all there in punctuated prayer book Hebrew. And to beef it all up, the app includes a page of Kabalistic and personal growth insights for each day, written by Rabbi Yaakov Haber (his whole book is included in the app). Jerusalem-based AppStudio built the whole thing.
Can I recommend Sefiros? If you always lose the “did I remember to count” game like I once did, sure, why not? At $4.99, it’s not cheap, as far as apps go. But who’s counting anyway?
Nostalgia Sunday – ViewMaster Israel
Filed under: Art, Blogging, Business, design, education, Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Movies, Nostalgia Sunday, Picture of the Week, Pop Culture, Technology, tv
If you are a person of a certain age, then the ViewMaster holds a special charm. Like its predecessor, the Stereoscope, the View-Master was the virtual reality viewer of its day: a device designed to present 3-D photo images. And, like its predecessor, the Holy Land was a subject of great interest and popularity.
A bit of history: the ViewMaster (or View-Master) was first introduced at the New York World’s Fair in 1939 by the partnership of Wilhelm Gruber, an organ maker and amateur photographer, and Harold Graves, who was in charge of the postcard division at Oregon-based Sawyer’s Photo Services.
Their idea was to update the old-fashioned stereoscope to the new Kodachrome 16-mm color film, printing small-format photo transparencies and mounting them in pairs on a disk to be viewed with a simple hand-operated viewer. Initially, the photo subjects were travelogues, such as Carlsbad Caverns and the Grand Canyon, quickly followed by more far-flung locations such as Jerusalem and the Holy Land.
Collector and dealer Kip “Mr. ViewMaster” Brockman has several such travelogues on his site, as does the ViewMaster World blog. The disks were accompanied by a narrative booklet. For example, if you were to purchase Modern Israel, part of the Nations of the World series, as you viewed the stereoscopic image, you would read the following:
“Our El Al Israel Airlines plane lands at Lod Airport, near Tel Aviv. An attractive hostess welcomes us to Israel with a spoken greeting in Hebrew, from the Bible: “Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and when thou goest out.”
Tel Aviv, Israel’s No. 1 boom town, is the first all Jewish metropolis since Biblical times…The beach front is a Coney Island on the Mediterranean; booths sell corn on the cob, watermelon, or falaffel (“the Israeli hot dog”)…
Tel Aviv stands as a symbol of modern, energetic Israel. The country’s spirit is personified in its new generation. The native born Sabra— Hebrew word for cactus (tough outside, sweet inside) — is tall, healthy, suntanned, and confident, with the swagger of an adventurer.”
Oh my gosh! I would really like to visit that place where air-hostesses quote scripture, Israelis are tall and un-neurotic, and the notion of falafel as “the Israeli hot dog” doesn’t send me into paroxysms of laughter. But I digress.
After 1966, when Sawyer’s became a wholly owned subsidiary of the General Aniline & Film (GAF) Corporation, more child-friendly subjects like cartoons and TV series were introduced.
The full account of View-Master’s history of Mergers & Acquisitions is a long one; the short version is that the product is currently carried by Mattel subsidiary Fisher-Price, which in December 2008 announced that it would cease production of the scenic disks depicting tourist attractions. According to Wikipedia, “These disks of picturesque scenes and landscape scenery were descendants of the first View-Master disks sold in 1939.”
Fisher-Price continues to produce disks of animated characters, including Dora the Explorer who prefers to go places instead of just looking at them on-screen. Well, travel is easier nowadays. There was something magical, though, about looking at the tiny celluloid images through the ViewMaster lens. (It was, as my significant other says, “like having a tiny, personal TV” and if you squished the eyepiece sideways into your brow ridge just right, you could get the full 3D effect, however briefly). So you can still get a ViewMaster. As for getting hold of ViewMaster travelogues, there’s always eBay.
When I’m 64
Filed under: A New Reality, education, Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Technology
As the transition from the somber mood of Remembrance Day makes way for the celebration of Independence Day, there’s a plethora of inspiring video clips to help us mark Israel’s 64th birthday.
We’ve already focused on ISRAEL21c’s great ‘What does Israel mean to you’ clip, (now augmented by the top 64 innvoations from Israel) and here’s a few others.
Here’s a photographic appreciation of the natural beauty of the country by Efrat-based photographer Yehoshua Halevi, featuring the song “Desert Call” by Eden Mi Qedem.
No Independence Day would be complete without a tribute to our fighting forces that protect us day in and out. Here’s a well-done one created and filmed by Aviv Vana Post Production in collaboration with shooteast.com
Here’s a unique take on the country’s birthday – done in animation. According to the creators, it attempts to portray the complex reality that Israelis live in on a daily basis.
And how could we not include a message from Mr. Israel, our venerable president Shimon Peres, who gives his independence greeting in his inimitable English.
Go enjoy the next 24 hours, with the ubiquitous barbecue, outdoor singing and dancing, and fireworks. Happy birthday, Israel.
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