Free the media market
Regulations and legislation cannot keep up with the pace of change and innovation that have completely transformed our media landscape beyond recognition.
Anachronistic regulatory strictures put in place in the 1980s and 1990s continue to govern the way our television and radio stations are run. And the time has come for major deregulation.
The latest example of risibly outdated media regulations involves Channel 20, a TV station criticized for being overly supportive of the present government and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Cable and Satellite Television Council members are now considering fining Channel 20 for airing a 20-minute interview with Netanyahu on Thursday. The crime? Channel 20 is not licensed to broadcast news without prior permission from the regulator.
“Broadcasting the interview is the latest in a long line of apparent violations [by Channel 20],” council chairwoman Dr. Yifat Ben Hay-Segev said. “These seeming violations have to do with the airing of news items in recent months.”
Regulatory bodies regularly interfere with the broadcasting of our TV and radio stations. Channel 2 and Channel 10, the two privately owned stations with licenses to broadcast, must invest tens of millions of shekels annually in original Hebrew-language content in the form of sitcoms, documentaries and other genres. Regulators also determine the amount of commercials that can appear, restrict the amount of air time given to news, reality TV and game shows, attempt to ensure that equal representation is given to women and ethnic minorities, and can ban advertisements that are considered to be hurtful to the public’s sensibilities.
The rationale is understandable enough. Our high-minded monitors of media content see themselves as an intellectual and cultural elite who must ensure that TV and radio programming is not left up to market forces and the primitive tastes of the masses. And there is some credence to their claim. Look at countries like Italy, where the media market was radically deregulated. Within a short time, programming was dominated by reality TV and game shows that are cheap to produce and enjoy high viewership.
The claim is also made that airwaves are a public commodity that belongs to the broader public and therefore must be regulated by the state.
However, an overly aggressive regulator has its own problems. Whom should we trust to determine for us what is good or bad taste? Though regulators are empowered by law to provide general directions to broadcasters on how to use their air time, they inevitably get involved in considerations that should not concern them.
In any event, in an age in which an abundance of Internet-based or cellphone platforms exist for the broadcasting of diverse forms of video and audio content, does it make sense to so heavily regulate TV and radio?
If the prime minister had been interviewed on an Internet-based platform, the regulator would not have been able to interfere.
The decision to split Channel 2 into two separate stations – Keshet and Reshet – is a small step that should include a much broader process of deregulation. New players must be allowed to launch TV and radio initiatives without all the prohibitively high levels of regulatory demands that prevent free-market forces from bringing more media diversity to Israeli society. We should give more credit to the wider public. Perhaps they will demand high-quality, original productions. And if air time is soon taken over by game shows and reality TV, at least it will be the result of a free and open market determined by supply and demand.
In any event, it is the job of the newly launched public broadcaster Kan to supply the sort of broadcasting that might not make economic sense to commercial broadcasters.
Only by opening up our airwaves to free competition by a broad variety of operators will we begin to see true diversity and representation of voices not presently heard in the TV and radio media landscape. The type of regulatory mindset behind the need to fine a TV station for broadcasting an interview with the prime minister belongs to a bygone era.