Homegrown reality: locally formatted Israeli programming and the global spread of format TV

Abstract

In recent years, global television formats have challenged the decades-long dominance of ‘finished’ US product imports in the international market, highlighting an alternative conceptual or formal television global flow. However the diversity of this flow is not always captured in the dominant industrial and academic discourses surrounding the contemporary spread of format television. One key oversight results from the tendency to overemphasize the big-name ‘official’ reality franchises while downplaying the importance of ‘unlicensed’ or locally formatted programming. Nevertheless, unaffiliated local productions, commonly known as ‘clones’, have played a significant role in reality television's global distribution. Focusing on one key Israeli case study – Lo Nafsik Lashir/We Won't Stop Singing, a locally formatted patriotic game show that evolved gradually into a Pop Idol ‘clone’ – this article offers an alternative framework for considering the importance of ‘unaffiliated’ programming. Thus, foregrounding the role of local creative industries, this paper argues for a shift in format TV scholarship to a more historically grounded and inclusive analysis of both official and unofficial formal, cultural and industrial exchange.

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