[FORTHCOMING] Decentring Formula Art Innovation: Israeli TV Industry and the transnational turn in content development. In, A. Moran, P. Jensen and K. Aveyard [Eds.] Global Television

Decentring Formula Art Innovation: Israeli TV Industry and the

transnational turn in content development

Sharon Shahaf, Georgia State University

FORTHCOMING In, A. Moran, P. Jensen and K. Aveyard [Eds.] Global

Television Formats: State of the Art. London: Intelect (Chapter accepted, book

in production, forthcoming 2015).

Abstract:

By allowing a separation between content development and

final production, global formats help traditionally isolated

industries to break through the linguistic and geo-cultural

barriers that hindered their participation in the finished global

trade. Moreover, formats are at the heart of the process through

which television, as a global medium, is responding to its

changing environment. As the medium is faced with growing

pressures to adjust to the presence of new media convergence, TV

industries around the world are interacting in their efforts to

rework the medium’s popular forms. The rise of formatting

exchange practices thus mark a radical decentring of the process

1

through which the medium generates and regenerates its ‘formula

art’ (Fiske 1987).

To illustrate the complexity of flows involved here one

would be hard pressed to find a better example than the recent

emergence of the Israeli format industry into as unlikely ‘global

Cinderella’. Understanding why and how Israeli companies achieved

their global success stands to teach us something about the

reconfiguration of the centre-periphery relationship in

contemporary ‘planet TV’.

While the most prevalent discussion of formats is heavily

focused on the question of travel, knowledge transfer or

franchising (formats are shows that get packaged in one territory

and reproduced in another), this chapter poses that to understand

their radical potential we must explore the practice of

formatting as a fundamental process for television content

development even before transnational transfer takes place.

Therefore, before the chapter turns to discuss the implications

of the Israeli case study, it first explores the significance of

formatting for television, starting with the fundamental

2

question: what are formats before they get packaged for

transnational reproduction? Using a television studies analysis

of medium, culture and industry, the chapter offers a wider

historical and theoretical context for the practice of formatting

to help explain how the transnational “stretching” of the process

helped intervene in the established hierarchies of core-periphery

that have underpinned the cultural dominance of the US in the

global television industry.

3

Roughly fifteen years after the big initial explosion of

reality television formats, the trade in programming concepts

rather than in finished shows continues to evolve and transform

the inner-workings of the global television industry. The

contemporary format-driven television market is characterized by

a diversifying range of exchange practices across more countries,

genres, channels, and platforms (broadcast, cable, computer and

mobile). Moreover, as the medium deals with an ever-changing

cultural, technological and economic global environment, the new

formats that are shaping television’s evolving face are no longer

devised exclusively in the U.S and Britain (or even Western

Europe).

By allowing a separation between content development and

final production, formats helped traditionally isolated

industries, especially in the non-English speaking margin to

break through the linguistic barriers that hindered their

participation in the finished global trade. As a result, formats

were able to slowly chip away at the Anglophone monopoly in

4

television content development and distribution. Formats

therefore create a much more intensive and multi-directional flow

of ideas, talent and capital in the global market. As one

television executive has put it in a recent professional

conference: ‘(in television content development) nowadays

everything is international and, everything is possible’ (NATPE

2014).

Moreover, in this newly internationalized arena formats are

at the heart of the process through which television, as a global

medium, is responding to its changing environment. As the medium

is faced with growing pressures to adjust to the presence of new

media convergence, the newly integrated television industries

around the world are interacting in their efforts to rework the

medium’s popular forms, and control their relationship with their

audience. Thus, formats don’t simply participate in new trends

like the turn to quality in drama or the push for digitally

native unscripted programming. These trends – fuelled by new

audience practices of consumption and interaction with digital,

mobile and social media (binge-viewing; live-twitting) – impact

creative decisions in boardrooms in L.A., Tel Aviv and Seoul. 5

These, in turn, can impact production in Belgrade, Beirut, Rio de

Janeiro or Moscow. The response to a globally prevalent new

technological environment by an internationally diverse group of

creative industries professionals thus marks a radical decentring of

the process through which the medium generates and regenerates

its ‘formula art’ (Fiske 1987).

As I suggested elsewhere (Shahaf 2014) the new global format

television landscape should be seen as generating a complex field

or network of intertextual and industrial exchange, wherein

multidirectional, overlapping, official and unofficial formal

flows occur simultaneously, across globally dispersed yet

growingly inter-connected ‘nodes’ or ‘scapes’ (Appadurai 1990).

To illustrate the complexity of flows involved here – and

the complication of the core/periphery relationship they entail –

one would be hard pressed to find a better example than the

recent developments that have turned the Israeli television

industry into an unlikely ‘global Cinderella’. Since the turn of

the twenty-first century, Israeli television has evolved from a

miniscule, linguistically isolated broadcast system, filling most

6

of its air-time with reruns of American and British programs,

into a booming global format hub with a track-record in exporting

quality programming concepts globally, with a particular focus on

penetrating the dominant American market. Seemingly overnight, a

host of Tel Aviv based companies have incubated and launched an

innovative, lean, mean, programming development machine with

pioneering global success in quality drama (In Treatment; Homeland)

and tech-savvy programming (Rising Star).

Understanding why and how Israeli companies achieved their

global success stands to teach us something about the

reconfiguration of the centre-periphery relationship in

contemporary ‘planet TV’. My forthcoming book will delve in

detail into extensive historical and theoretical analyses of this

development. Presently however, this chapter seeks to use the

Israeli case study to offer an initial articulation of that

theory. Pushing for a shift in the way media scholars have

debated formatting, this chapter argues that a paradigmatic shift

is necessary if we are to more fully understand how the

phenomenon of format trade was able to so radically decentre

content development in global television. 7

While the most prevalent discussion of formats is heavily

focused on the question of travel, knowledge transfer or

franchising (formats are shows that get packaged in one territory

and reproduced in another), I pose that to understand their

radical potential we must explore the practice of formatting as a

fundamental process for television content development even

before transnational transfer takes place. Therefore, before I

turn to discuss the implications of the Israeli case study, the

next section explores the significance of formatting for

television, starting with the fundamental question: what are

formats before they get packaged for transnational reproduction?

Using a television studies analysis of medium, culture and

industry, the following section offers a wider historical and

theoretical context for the practice of formatting and thus

explains how transnational stretching of the process helped

intervene in the established hierarchies of core-periphery that

have underpinned the cultural dominance of the US in the global

television industry.

Finally, the chapter will discuss the Israeli case study to

help demonstrate the radical decentring potential of new 8

transnational format flows. It will be clear that Israeli TV

represents several emerging trends in that arena: the rise of

small-scale industries as format nations; the decentring of

innovation as marginal players play a key role in extending

formatting practices across genres (drama) and platforms (mobile,

internet); the advantage of marginality as peripheral industries

utilize skills fostered in an environment of constrained

resources to generate global success; and, finally, ‘reversing

the flow’ – aggressive networking in Hollywood to help build

global brand recognition. While separately, these trends may not

seem to mark a critical watershed for the industry, especially

when gauged in strict market measurements, the chapter concludes

by arguing that taken together these new developments hold

immense significance in terms of the cultural dynamics of media

globalization that they subvert.

Decentring Television’s Formula Art

As we have learned from McLuhan (1964) with the introduction

of new media, older media have to reconfigure in order to

navigate their new environment. Thus, with the introduction of

9

television, radio and cinema had to readjust, each distilling

what was most unique about it, and surviving through highlighting

these special affordances (Straubhaar et al. 2013). Radio

abandoned drama and developed forms utilizing situations in which

viewing was either inappropriate or impossible (music, talk and

news while driving). Cinema turned back to spectacle, trying to

turn the big screen and non-domestic viewing experience to its

advantage, which led to the rise of the special-effect

blockbuster in the 1970s.

Faced with the ever proliferating presence of (and push

towards convergence with) new mobile, computer and social media,

television is currently in the throes of a very similar process.

In the last two decades the medium has been busily renegotiating,

revamping and reinventing its popular forms, struggling, with

varying degrees of success to distil and hold on to some of its

core assets – domesticity, seriality, simultaneous reception,

‘liveness’, and melodrama.1

This process is extremely multidimensional and involved all

facets of the creative industries. Nevertheless, in what follows

10

I would like to point to the fundamental way in which formatting

and reformatting the medium’s popular forms – and specifically

doing so in an unprecedented transnational manner – has been in

the forefront of these efforts.

The relevant question is what precisely constitutes the

process of television formatting and what its transnational

stretching entails? Given that I hope to get to the new heart of

global television, I take as my theoretical starting point one of

television studies’ core texts –Television Culture (John Fiske, 1987).

Fiske, whose work was pivotal for the development of the cultural

studies oriented Anglophone-centred discipline of TV Studies in

Britain, Australia and the U.S. has offered one of the more

useful frameworks for discussion of television formatting in his

analysis of television’s intertextuality. More specifically, I

would like to focus on his useful discussion of one specific form

of television intertextuality – television genre and especially

his concept of television’s ‘formula art’.

Television, explains Fiske is a highly conventional or

‘generic’ medium (Ibid.: 110).2 This, to a large degree, is due

11

to the high cost and the complicated collaborative process

involved in television production, as well as the

unpredictability of the market. The industrial mechanism of

production that regulates such collaborative creative and

financial activities is largely responsible for television’s

conventional forms, which ‘suit both the audience with their need

for familiarity and routinization and producers, for established

conventions not only keep the costs of production down, they also

minimize the risk in the marketplace’ (Ibid.: 37-8). Television

genres are thus not merely forms of textual codification but

rather systems of orientation expectations and conventions that

circulate between industries, audiences, texts and subjects

(Neale cited in Fiske 1987: 111). Therefore, according to Fiske,

it is the economic dimensions of television that give it

conventional form.

Fiske points out that the conventional elements shared by

different programmes are often disparaged by being referred to as

‘a formula’ and that popular culture is thus referred to as

‘formula art’, which is opposed to ‘high’ art with its inventive

or original structure. Nevertheless, the conventions shared 12

between works of popular culture form links not only between

similar texts but also ‘between texts and audiences, texts and

producers, and producers and audiences’ (Ibid.: 111). Conventions

are therefore important for television because they are ‘a prime

way of both understanding and constructing the triangular

relationship between producers, texts and audiences’ (Ibid.:

111).

Fiske further usefully distinguished between ‘conventions’,

which are ‘social and ideological’, and ‘a formula’, which is ‘an

industrial and economic translation of conventions’ (emphasis

added) that is ‘essential for the efficient production of popular

cultural commodities’ (Ibid. 110). Therefore, he argues, formulas

should be seriously explored rather than ‘dismissed’ as

unimaginative as ‘getting the right formula that transforms the

right conventions into a popular art form is no easy task’

(Ibid.: 110). In other words, Fiske provides us with an account

of the way television content is developed through an

intertextual process of innovation within imitation as well as

the means to appreciate such a process as complex collaborative

and most importantly difficult creative work.13

Of course, as I will continue to explain, transnational

travel further complicates Fiske’s conceptualization, especially

when considering the way the shared ideological and social

conventions of television formulated in the U.S. and the U.K

might interact with the cultural ideological and social

conventions in other locales to which they have travelled.

However, before delving into these dynamics in greater detail, it

is important to note that what Fiske’s conceptualization

powerfully exposes is the fundamental role of formatting (and

reformatting) as an inherent part of television’s (inter)textual

process of production. This is clearly relevant for the

production culture associated with the medium as a whole –

independently of the issue of transnational travel, reproduction

or transfer.

Thus his description of television’s conventional form and

its close reliance on reoccurring conventions and industrial

formulas is remarkably similar to the way global formats are

routinely described as a cost-minimizing technique allowing

broadcasters to create new programming using proven and tried

‘templates’ (Moran 1998; Waisbord 2004; Chalaby 2012; Esser 2013;14

Moran 2014). This is not at all coincidental because Fiske –

although not at all concerned with ‘formats trade’ or ‘knowledge

transfer’ (and although dealing with television intertextuality

within the medium’s Anglophone ‘core’ and not as it stretches

across transnational border) – was nonetheless dealing with the

same exact process.

In his field defining book Copycat TV: Globalization, Program Format

and Cultural Identity (1998), Moran offers a similar definition of

formats as generative categories in serial programming

production. Citing the interaction between variable and non-

variable elements as the mechanism for episode generation Moran

describes the fundamental process of formatting as template for

all serial content development. However, drawn by the emerging

and innovative process of established franchising Moran

ultimately chose to centre his definitive discussion of formats

in Copycat TV and in subsequent publications (Moran 2009, 2013,

2014) on the definition of format as mechanism for knowledge

transfer and reproduction.

15

However, I insist that further development of Moran’s

initial definition of formatting is worthwhile as it fleshes out

formatting as a fundamental process of textual production which

facilitates and regulates industrial innovation while maintaining

efficiency and predictability in television production. Thus,

before they ever get packaged for adaptation, official exchange

or reproduction formats represent the process through which the

creative industries introduce and implement change as well as

predictability into the complicated and costly process of

cultural production.

Further drawing on Raymond Williams famous notion of flow

(1974), this description of television’s content development also

clearly connects the considerations involved in the production of

discrete textual units to wider considerations regulating the

television schedule (such as the actual length of a programme)

and to the medium’s structure of commercial distribution as a

whole. Here production and form are linked to the question of

audience consumption in a generative feedback loop. This

cyclical process further demonstrates my main arguments, namely;

it is through formatting that television is responding and trying16

to control and predict its environment, its industrial

structures, its revenue, and the way its audience will interact

with its texts.

What Fiske’s work on formula art tells us is that television

was always engaged in formatting and reformatting its textual

forms. However for a very long period of time, the process was

powerfully centred in one specific dominant space, i.e. the USA.

Moreover, as David Thorburn (2013) points out, during the ‘first

great era of American television’ the medium thrived as it

enjoyed a relatively unchanging technological platform. Thorburn

argues that, compared to the current new media environment, it is

now clear that despite what seemed at the time as great

instabilities – the introduction of colour, the shift from

network to cable, the introduction of VCR – American television

in its first 50 years enjoyed remarkable technological and

industrial stability, which allowed it to develop into an

enormously effective industrial juggernaut with elaborate and

established conventional forms of storytelling.

17

In that environment and with the crushing dominance of the

American world power, the conventional forms of American

television’s formula art rose to the status of global industrial

norms. That created a sense of television elsewhere as ‘belated’,

always struggling to catch up, always imitative and impossible to

export. This was only fortified as TV professionals elsewhere

were trying to imitate the popular American forms with markedly

more limited resources (Shahaf 2007; Rivero 2012; Ferrari 2012;

Bourdon 2012).

However, ‘times they are a-changing’. A very dramatic shift

occurred around the turn of the twenty-first century as the

consequences of media globalization led to conditions of growing

global standardization and industrial trans-national integration.

Around the world, conditions have materialized through the so-

called ‘communication revolution’, the restructuring of media

industries practically everywhere as commercial, private and

profit driven, and, finally, the rise of the format trade

associated with the rapid global circulation of reality

television.

18

In these conditions, formats help TV industries transcend

some of the built in geo-cultural boundaries that, as Appadurai

(1996: 29) mentions, kept cultures apart and insulated for

centuries. Even with the spread of colonial conquest and techno-

capitalism (Kellner 2002) which began breaking down these

barriers, global access was still limited to elite groups. One of

the dominant mechanisms of separation and conquest remained

language and that privileged the English speaking world; first

with British colonial conquest and then with the rise of American

soft power through the allure of the Hollywood entertainment

industries.

These divisions are radically subverted by the mechanisms

offered by formats. Divorcing content development from

production, formats are enabling for the first time language-free

travel of cultural goods. This allows producers and executive

from any one location to work through other local languages with

an exported form or formula-art-concept. Thus with formal flows

the language of exchange, the lingua franca (or ‘bridge

language’) in the global television marketplace became not any

one spoken language but the grammar of televisuality itself.3 The19

global diversification of this grammar is most intensely

manifested in format trades or, as I would like to refer to them,

using Fiske, flows of television’s formula art.

New, innovative and growingly visible global flows of

television formula art are emerging from previously isolated

industries in places like Denmark, The Netherlands, Colombia,

Turkey, South Korea or Israel. Encompassing practically all forms

of contemporary programming categories these new flows impact the

global television market and consequently global television

culture as a whole. Thus, while much of the vocabulary of

television’s formula art was traditionally designed in the

Anglophone centres of the medium, the current decentring of the

process through which TV forms are created and distributed

globally complicates traditional scenarios of core-periphery

relations in television.

This is exactly what the analysis of Israeli television in

the next section of this chapter aims to demonstrate. The

following section will present a brief and initial if

contextualize analysis of the strategies that allowed Israeli

20

television professional to build a successful global television

formatting industry. This analysis will show that Israeli success

depended on two interrelated processes. The cultivation of

robust, creative and innovative local production culture and the

fostering of a powerful wide-reaching global distribution

mechanism.

How applicable is the Israeli case for our understanding of

other emerging formatting industries? The answer to this has to

do with the complicated tensions between the global and the local

that manifest so clearly in the global format phenomenon. Format

scholarship has widely acknowledged that formats serve a

particularly potent focal point for the study of these

contradictory dynamics (Moran 1998, Waisbord 2004, Oren and

Shahaf 2012, Navarro 2012; Esser 2014 – to name but a few).

However, while much of that literature is framed by a still too

centralized model of franchising/adaptation, my analysis aims to

show another dimension of the process. By looking at formatting

as propelling a decentralization and diversification of the

processes through which global television develops its popular

formula art forms, my analysis foregrounds the industrial 21

creative process of previously marginalized industries who are

now not only creating innovative formula art but also busily

building a new and much more multi-directional, networked and

globally integrated mechanism for its distribution.

The dynamics revealed in such analysis are glocal not

because a concept fully developed in one location is slightly

adapted to fit local culture elsewhere. Rather, this analysis

centres on the way different local industries in emerging format

hubs such as Israel, Denmark, Turkey, or Argentina all negotiate

the growingly globalized conditions of the media industries at

the same time that each also negotiates a very particular local

set of constraints. Each local industry with emerging global

aspirations and reach - deals with a different institutional,

economic, cultural, regulatory and political structure. Each

navigates its new path through a very different historically

structured culture of national or regional broadcast 4.

Therefore, in studying Israel I do not aim to set the case

study up as a generalized model. Instead, through highly

contextualized exploration of the particularities of the Israeli case

22

we can glimpse the more globally applicable new dynamics of

television’s formula art decentring.

The Israeli Format Boom

In recent years there seems to be a universal recognition in

industry, trade press and academic circles that the Israeli

television industry is a hot spot for creativity and innovation

in the new format-driven global television arena (Andreeva 2012,

Berrin 2012, Hogan 2012, Shahaf 2012, Chalaby 2015). The success

of key shows like drama series In Treatment, Homeland and MICE, game

shows Still Standing and Boom! and reality television concepts like

Rising Star and Connected are some of the more visible success

stories.

The Israeli television industry’s presence in the format

market place began gradually in the early to mid-2000s.Three big

players – Keshet, Dori Media and Armoza Formats – dominate the

business and, as a recent New York Times story puts it,

‘together’ they ‘have sold over 100 shows to markets as diverse

23

as Indonesia, Japan, Finland and Brazil….(and) business is

booming (Heyman 2014).

The biggest fish in this pond is the Israeli-founded Latin-

American giant Dori Media Group. The company was founded by

Israeli-Argentinian Yair Dori. An early example of growing

transnational integration enabled by the privatization/channel

multiplication revolution, Dori started with two local Israeli

niche channels focused on importing Latin telenovelas. It grew

exponentially over the years by getting involved on the

production end in Argentina, producing a string of international

hits like Chiquititas and Rebelde Way, developing a unique business

strategy which includes ownership and control over the full life

cycle of the product from production to broadcast to

merchandizing and format resale – and, subsequently, expanding

that strategy into new territories (launching channels in Europe

and Asia) (Waller 2013; Heyman 2014).

Another key player is the more specialized Armoza Formats.

Founded in 2005, Armoza has rapidly grown to be one of the top

independent players in the international content market and a key

24

distributor of global content. Armoza has a proven track record

of success across all genres and dozens of global broadcast

deals, including the BBC UK, NBC USA, TF1 France, Channel 4 UK,

RTL Germany, HBO, and TV2 Norway.

However, while the overall success of Israeli television

could not be achieved without the tireless work of this closely

knit group of players – distributors, production companies, local

broadcasters, as well as many local above-/below-the-line workers

involved with creative industries production – the big

breakthrough is attributed to the success and visibility of a few

high-profile Israeli television properties, and especially,

scripted properties that made a breakthrough in the American

market.

Although Israeli formats have made a name for themselves

through the activity of several key players – for those in the

know it was also of little surprise that the big-time

breakthrough in Hollywood and beyond was achieved by Keshet.

Sharing control of the dominant commercial Israeli Channel 2,

Keshet is in fact the most powerful player and undisputed leader

25

in the commercial Israeli broadcast environment. Therefore, and

with a track record of local popularity and innovation (Shahaf

2009), Keshet was clearly best positioned to reap the benefits of

the emerging buzz around Israeli television.

Success in America is not the sole goal of an aspiring,

small-scale industry like Israel. As American television

executive Ben Silverman, CEO of Electus (and the man behind

popular U.S. formats adaptation such as Ugly Betty) put it, ‘for

Israel to be successful, their ideas have to travel around the

world’ and ‘Hollywood is just one stop on that journey’(Berrin

2012). However, as both Israeli and American commentators note,

accomplishments in the American market are particularly desirable

for many Israeli executives as they believe that a successful

reproduction in an American network is the golden ticket for

heightened visibility in the global arena (Telem, personal

communication).

Indeed, one of the biggest breakthroughs for Israeli

television globally happened when first In Treatment (HBO, 2008

Distributed by Dori) and then Homeland (Showtime, 2011 created

26

and distributed by Keshet) achieved the coveted success in the

U.S. market. Based almost verbatim on Levi’s Israeli series

Be’Tipul (in its first season at least), the HBO series In Treatment is

widely considered to have opened the door for Israeli television

in Hollywood and beyond. Playing a pioneering role alongside

shows like The Killing (Denmark) this show was one of the first to

start the trend expending formatting practices from reality and

game shows to quality drama5. It also marked the unprecedented

and growing appetite of American industry executives for remaking

content based on formula art developed in marginal emerging

markets (Andreeva 2012, Berrin 2012, Chalaby 2015). Equally

notable here is the first Israeli developed prime-time game show

to air on an American broadcast network (Still Standing, NBC, 2012

distributed by Armoza Formats) and subsequent deals for gameshow

and reality reformatting of such Israeli hits as Rising Star (ABC)

and Boom! (recently bought by FOX for American remake).

The success of each of these shows was followed by a host of

development deals of both scripted and unscripted Israeli

developed concepts in Hollywood. For example, Keshet – who is

behind the success of both Homeland and Rising Star – currently 27

has six projects in development for different U.S. channels (e.g.

Allegiance, NBC; Boom, FOX; Your Family or Mine, TBS) and many more all

over the world (amongst other territories in Korea, Brazil,

Russia, Germany, Britain, Greece, Russia, Portugal and France).

Examining Keshet’s strategies for global success and its

unique production culture is therefore extremely helpful for

understanding the unique strength of the new Israeli television

machine of formula art innovation and distribution. Across all of

these strategies, what seems important to me is the local

aptitude in finding ways to utilize the advantages of marginality.

Here for example, my analysis of Keshet’s marketing demonstrates

the way it utilizes its control over the local market to help

propel global success. In the Israeli market, despite its

competitiveness, channel 2 in general – and Keshet specifically –

enjoys long held centrality (Shahaf 2009).

Thus, when launching brand new programming concepts, Keshet

can rely on its well-oiled marketing machine and the brand

loyalty of its home audience to yield substantial rating and

sharing data. These are then skilfully used in the company’s

28

global marketing materials to show brand new concepts, which

allows shows like the interactive Rising Star to open to

astonishingly big ratings compared to the standard in other

global markets. By utilizing its local dominance, Keshet

leverages its locally powerful position and maximizes use of its

local audience loyalty to push the envelope in innovative

programming forms and also make the rating data to support

international sales.

Keshet’s resourcefulness is also evident in the way it was

able to utilize In Treatment’s pioneering success although it

wasn’t in fact their show. Just as I was wrapping up this chapter

for publication the news came out that The Affair (Showtime), ‘an

American series with Israeli roots’ (Groom et al 2015 ) won the

Golden Globe award for best Drama series in 2014. Beating out

longer-running favourites such as Downton Abbey (ITV) and Game of

Thrones (HBO) – The Affair marked Israeli creator, executive producer

and showrunner Hagai Levi’s return to American television. Five

years after getting nominated for his global hit series In

Treatment, Levi finally won the accolade alongside co-creator

29

Sarah Treem, who first joined forces with him on HBO’s 2008

adaptation of the Israeli psychological drama Betipul.

Levi’s current win was long awaited as, despite his

pioneering role in bringing Israeli drama to Hollywood, and

despite garnering the nomination for this prestigious award in

2008 the first win for an Israeli drama at the Golden Globe was

picked in 2012 by Homeland. A Keshet property originally created

for Israeli audiences by Gideon Raff, Homeland was far more

successful than In Treatment in terms of the finished show’s global

circulation. It also did much better in the award department

picking up several prestigious Emmy’s and Golden Globes.

Although Levi – who is the former head of drama at Keshet –

was not directly involved in the production of Homeland, it is

widely acknowledged in Israeli industrial circles that Homeland

owes its very existence to the success of In Treatment. The

pioneering success of that show in the American market, its

innovative format, the overwhelmingly positive critical reception

and award recognition it achieved and its huge success as a

30

global format franchise (Heyman 2014) played key role in creating

American interest in Israeli formats.

In Treatment was remarkably innovative. Levi, working in his

mind to create an experimental shows only he and his friends

might watch (in Dichek 2008) stumble upon the idea as a result of

being forced to make a living working on Israeli telenovelas

(dubbed in Hebrew ‘telenovelot). Levi disliked working on the

mass produced products.6 However, he did notice the unique strong

emotional connection between audiences and characters that such

daily formats foster. As he moved on to serve as the head of

drama in Keshet, he was still wondered if this powerful mechanism

could be put to use in the service of telling a different type of

dramatic story.

This notion, combined with Levi’s notorious love-hate

obsession with psychoanalysis (Shani 2014), resulted in an

epiphany one December evening at the gym (Levi cited in Shargal

2006). Insisting on the daily episode structure of this unique

show (and given Keshet’s awkward schedule as it shared one

channel with another franchising company, Reshet) Levi pitched

31

Be’Tipul/In Treatment to most other Israeli broadcasters. It took a

very long time before the show finally landed a distribution deal

on the cable platform HOT (Ibid.).

However, once it started airing on Israeli television Levi

was bombarded by offers from Hollywood-based industry movers and

shakers asking him to try and make a pitch for it in L.A. Israeli

actress Noa Tishby reportedly succeeded finally by enlisting Mark

Wahlberg through their mutual agent, Rick Rosen of Endevour. With

that cadre of powerful Hollywood players behind it, the show was

finally picked by HBO in a competitive situation (Berrin 2012).

The success of In Treatment led Rosen to begin networking in

earnest with the Tel Aviv based industry. Thus, Keshet CEO Avi

Nir was able to pitch Hatufim/ Homeland to the influential

Hollywood agent when the later visited Tel Aviv in 2009 (Berrin

2012, Telem personal communication). Hearing from Nir about the

Hatufim/Homeland concept Rosen decided it would be a good fit for

Howard Gordon’s (24, FOX) next project. Calling the famous

writer/producer as soon as he touched down in Los Angeles, Rosen

reportedly announced to Gordon ‘I have your new show’ (Berrin

32

2012). The Showtime adaptation had Israeli creator Gideon Raff

and several Keshet executives co-write and co-produce alongside

Gordon and his partner of 24 acclaim Alex Ganza. Homeland quickly

became the most successful Israeli dramatic concept export to

date, and reportedly had president Obama on the roster of fans –

but it is still lags behind In Treatment in terms of local

reformatting or reproduction.7

Much was written about this show and the reasons for its

surprise American and global success: the universality of

therapy, the brilliantly ploy of psychotherapy and the reliance

on superb writing, the daily format (cheaply generating 50

episodes of quality drama). Beyond these attributes, the show

appeared at just the right time as the decision to adapt by HBO

coincided with the 2007 Writer’s Guild strike, which made the

availability of expertly-written, full-blown finished scripts for

over 50 episodes particularly alluring.

But ultimately, and despite going on for three seasons the

warm critical reception and winning several acting awards, the

American In Treatment was not as popular as its successor. However

33

the show has much wider and further reaching significance.

Introducing a truly formatted yet quality formula art that could

be used to generate new cheaply made quality content the show

also helped establish a long-term creative relationship between

Tel Aviv and L.A. in the process it also helped establishing the

Israeli television industry as a powerhouse in dramatic globally

distributable content development.

Following the initial success of In Treatment relations and

networking between TLV and LA blossomed, and multiple projects

adapting Israeli programming concepts for the U.S. market went

into development. Despite many fits and false starts – shows not

getting picked up for series (Pillars of Smoke NBC; Danny Hollywood the

CW), or getting picked up only to be unceremoniously cancelled

(The EX List CBS; Traffic Light, FOX) – and despite wide speculations on

whether this was a passing fad, in the years since In Treatment

broke the Hollywood glass ceiling for Israeli television, the

nation’s tiny isolated industry managed to turn itself into a

bona fide format exporter (Aberbach 2014).

34

But, if In Treatment opened the door, Homeland tore open the

floodgate. The success of Homeland was skilfully utilized by the

key players in the local industry to help propel Israeli

programming concepts to further global success. This is

especially notable in the case of Keshet that followed up its

winning streak with a well-calculated and multidimensional attack

on the global market. In MipFormat 2014 and on the backdrop of

Homeland’s success the company launched a new interactive format,

Rising Star. Shooting for the big prize of the format world – the

primetime live reality competition format –and offering a fresh

high-tech twist the company emerged triumphant. All around the

world media reports extolled the smashing success in sales for

this format (Ritchie 2013 Add more) Even before the conference

began major broadcasters in key markets (France, Germany, Italy)

bought it and by the end of MIP many more had purchased it as

well. This was followed shortly after by an announcement that

Keshet was working to develop the format in the U.S. and,

finally, with the launch of Rising Star on ABC.

This was a carefully planned ‘attack’. The broadcaster took

a calculated risk, re-launching the veteran Kohav Nolad/A Star is 35

Born, one of Israel’s most popular programs in the midst of the

Israeli holiday season.. Banking on the re-launched show to yield

exceptionally high local rating – which will serve as a helpful

sales tool in the international market – who, alongside Keshet

got used to viewing the Israeli market as a useful TV format

‘experiment lab’.

The growing international recognition of the Israeli

television provost is also accentuated by a recent wave of

international acquisitions and investments in the Israeli market.

In 2012, Red Arrow Entertainment Group, the production subsidiary

of Euro broadcaster ProSiebenSat.1, bought a majority stake in

the Israeli July August Production (Roxborough 2012). About a

year later, the independent production giant Endemol bought first

the local production company (Kupferman) and then proceeded to

acquire 33% stakes in the local channel 2 broadcaster Reshet

(Szalai 2013). In press releases justifying the acquisitions,

these companies reaffirmed the rising status of the Israeli

market as a hotbed of creativity and innovations, citing a desire

to get in on the ground floor of this action (Ibid.).

36

What the Israeli case demonstrates is precisely that

previously marginal players appear to have arrived—through

radical formatting innovations—at the very centre of global

television.

Alongside Levi and Raff’s accomplishment, a host of other players

are vigorously operating in LA and beyond, forging format deals

across all programming genres and across all five continents. In

the case of the Israeli industry several factors combined to make

global expansion strategies successful. As with other emerging

once-marginalized players, it is the local particularities of

each place and system that are in turn reconfiguring and

integrating the broader global television system as a whole.

37

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1 All of these traits are apparent in the ‘big three’ first reality-TV mega-formats (Idol, Survivor Big Brother) that marked the rise of reality television. For Example see Oren and Shahaf (2012) for a comparative discussion of the Idol type audition format. My forthcoming book devotes an entire chapter to analyzing the way this programming concept used new media and audience interaction (SMS) to manufacture a national or regional ‘media event’, fostering mass live viewing and participation while providing cut-throat drama through competition/elimination and effective sentimental attachment through the melodrama of identity politics (by casting contestants to represent various ethnic, class, gender and other identity archetypes)

2 In favor of time, I will not fully address here the complicated conversation about ‘genre’ in television and how that label might overlap or defer from formula or format. This too will is more fully developed in my forthcoming book project on television formats. However I will just note (as many before me have – Feuer, 1987;Mittell, 2005) that genre theory was never a really good fit to describe television’s inter-textuality. Nonetheless, by framing the debate around ‘formula art’ Fiske’s conceptualization is useful in avoiding some of the pitfalls of genre theory’s notorious poor fit for discussing television’s production culture. I hopemy omissions as I worked around his use of genre aren’t heresy – I just think discussing formula art independently of genre is appropriate.

3 Lingua Franca, also called a bridge language, or vehicular language, is a language systematically (as opposed to occasionally, or casually) used to make communication possible between persons not sharing a native language, in particularwhen it is a third language, distinct from both native languages (Chirikba 2008:31)

4 Thus for example Denmark’s production culture that made it a powerhouse in drama formatting with reach into the U.S. and U.K markets amongst other, was shapedby the very structure of Danish society and culture. A recent New Yorker story describes a dream public-broadcast system lavishing its writer with time and resources to materialized individual authorial visions (‘the one vision’ approach) grooming them from film school on to become passionate curious story tellers (Collins 2013). South Korea’s industry is negotiating commercial imperatives more similar to the conditions faced by the Israeli industry. However, its industry is particular for the way it utilizes its network with the Korean K-pop machine. For example the new Korean adaptation of Israeli Keshet’s MICE features a local K-pop star Kim Jae-joong.[girlfriday 2014]. (My sincerer gratitude to my student Soo Keung Jung’s for so generously sharing her dissertation research on the Korean television industry and format market in my Graduate seminar Understanding Format TV, Georgia State University, Fall 2014).

5 With the exception of the U.S. –U.K exchange that as Chalaby (2012) and others demonstrate was always robust.

6 In Shargal, 2006 he is cited saying that telenovelas demand only craft but he couldn’t master passion to execute them and at this point to do a show is like lifting a mountain and he cannot do it without passion.

7 Since its first U.S. adaptation in 2008 In Treatment’s innovative dramatic format has been reproduced in more than 20 countries including Poland, Italy,

Brazil, Canada, Russia, Slovenia, Japan and Argentina. The rights to produce localversions of Homeland have been sold in Russia, Colombia, Mexico, Turkey and South Korea – a handful of territories in comparison to In Treatment’s adaptation track record in over 20 territories (keshetinternational.com)