"Local" radio stations in Israel

A smile always comes to my lips when I read about Israel's "local" radio stations. Way back in 1995 when we finally got commercial radio, each station said on their opening days (and I have it on tape!) that they will serve the community, have local news, and be active in local matters.

GIVE ME A BREAK!!

How many of Israel's local stations have a local news broadcast today? How many stations are active in the community? Not many I can tell you. Oh and by the way, they are not called "local" radio stations anymore, but "regional".

Without naming names, and leaving myself open to being sued, can anyone tell me how many radio stations in Israel are actually focused on their community? How many have local news? How many even have a "What's on"!!

What angers me is that the Second Radio Channel Radio Authority, who are responsible for the oversee of these stations, doesn't do anything about it. There are many stations in the center of the country who just play music all day (great if you like 20 minutes of music and 40 minutes of commercials!). Now THAT is what I call local radio.

And what about actually catering to your local audience? Let's take the area where I live - the Sharon area just outside Tel-Aviv. This area is full of English speaking residents. When I left RAM FM, I went to these stations and offered them a programme for these people - a programme where they could get nowhere else. ALL the stations turned me down, saying that they didn't want a programme in English. "We live in Israel" they said, the language is Hebrew.
Here I must raise my hat to Israel Radio that have programmes in Russian and Ethiopian most of the day. Also Radius runs an all day Russian language radio station on 89.1FM.

But English? Hey, we are a cultured lot we are, we won't cause any trouble. I think the huge success of stations like the Voice of Peace, Radio West in Jerusalem, and most recently RAM FM proves the English speaking needs to be taken more attention of.

But hey, wouldn't that be catering to your local audience?