Yossi Uzrad, director-general of ICP, which is owned by the cable companies and operates Channel 3 and the Movie Channel, views the situation very differently. While he does not claim that the cable companies have behaved perfectly, he says the areas in which they have fallen short should not completely overshadow their accomplishments. A revolution has taken place that that is hard to describe. Think about it. Ten years ago, Israel was not part of the global village, there was one channel run by the government.
Cable television is a huge, amazing success.
The number of cable subscribers has soared from approximately 250,000 in 1990 to some 1.1 million households in 1999. Uzrad believes that the unrelenting criticism over Israeli cable television's content is misplaced and lacks a comparative perspective regarding what is available in other countries. He notes that countries such as Holland, Austria, and Belgium still don't have a movie channel. I don't know of any other channel in the world that offers the cream of American programming like Channel 3. Yet Uzrad does not defend all of the behavior of the cable companies.