Thank you for tuning in to this AMTV documentary! I hope you enjoyed this rather baffling yet fascinating story! A special thank you to Toby Lior Carmel! He reached out and suggested the idea of telling this story, and presented me with an initial script to cover it! I adapted his script into what you've just watched, and without his help, knowledge and insight into this story, then this video would have never come about! Thank you Toby! Please leave a LIKE on this video, SUBSCRIBE to the channel if you're new, and SHARE it around on all of your socials! See you in the next one!

The younger generation needed to know that even in the United States that in the late 70s and early 1980's not all TV sets in use were color sets. Black and White sets were still in use until the end of the 1980's in America and probably far later elsewhere. Even medium size TV sets built in the 1960s were well built, easy to get repaired, and last decades with regular use.

Given how much pressure there was from not just the broadcasters but also the people of Israel, I wonder why there weren't political parties saying "vote for us and we will end the ban on color TV".

My father talks about talks about being in Israel during the moon landing in 1969. He said that it wasn't available on live TV. He had to listen to it on the radio.

Another country that could make for an interesting "History of TV" video is Brazil. We took the frequency+geometry+framerate of NTSC, but with PAL color encoding. It was named PAL-M. One of my college teachers was the man who developed the format, Alcyone Fernandes de Almeida Jr. The idea was to avoid both the flickering of PAL standards and the color distortion of NTSC. In fact, it was the best of both worlds and the image quality of locally produced content was gorgeous.

Israel wasn't the only country where colour was suppressed. I read on the web that here in Australia, before the official launch of colour TV and during the hours when TV stations weren't supposed to broadcast in colour, TV pre-launch, stations kept broadcasting in colour, except that they omitteed the colour burst signal. Like Israel, colour TVs could be modified to be able to watch in colour despite the lack of a colour burst signal, but people had to adjust the picture occasionally as the colours would drift. However, i can't find any references on the web at the moment.

As an Israeli, I knew about this story but not all of its details. My Gen X parents have always told me of the time there was only was channel. Two bonus facts: 1. One of the shows you showed, Zehu Ze, got a 2020 reboot that’s still going. 2. Tommy Lapid later went into politics, and so did his son, who served as Prime Minister for 6 months last year

The trial of Adolf Eichmann was televised and broadcast internationally in 1961. I believe this event forced Israeli politicians to rethink.

It might be interesting to cover South Africa, which didn't have national TV until the late-70s (with most people not having TVs until the 80s). Many communities relied on a monthly service that brought imported TV programs/movies to the local town hall or community Center. Radio drama continued until TV took over. Radio enthusiasts have been trying to restore Springbok Radio"s program archives from homemade off-the-air recordings.

As a teen I remember this time. I did watch the Eurovision in color. It was an event at the time. They did broadcast sometime different shows in color. I remember a nature show with David Attenborough. Another attempt to not corrupt the youth of the 1960s was banning the Beatles to perform in Israel.. 😢

In Iceland we got our first TV station in 1966, but we didn’t get colour until 1976. They didn’t start broadcasting every day of the week until 1987, until then there was no broadcast on Thursday’s. We didn’t get our second station until late 1986. Before we got our own station a lot of people were watching a broadcast from the American military base stationed in Iceland, but it was frowned upon by many as they believed it was damaging Icelandic culture, whatever that is.

It’ll be fun to see you to cover Japan’s transition to color.

I was in elementary school in Israel during the years of: the eraser, anti-eraser and transition to color. One detail worth mentioning- until the end of the 1970s, Israel suffered from lack of foreign currency due to the struggling economy and the Arab boycott (many brands were boycotting Israel: Coca Cola, Pepsi, Honda, all fast food chains etc.). As a result, the government imposed strict restrictions: For example you could only withdraw foreign currency with a flight ticket in hand, and there was a strict quota on the amount. Your luggage was searched for cash etc. Therefore, the government was doing everything they could to limit the import of foreign luxury goods, such as color TVs.

These anti-colour TV attitudes were wild, man. I'm surprised there wasn't one that said that colour tv would make people violent or something.

3:52 I do remember vaguely a report that included an interesting fact: When Ben Gurion visited the French PM (I believe that happened around 1962), he saw a documentary aired on the telly, focusing on nature. That particular program made him change his mind about the concept of television - in its educational purposes in particular.

You should also make a story about how Romania got color television. It has a very interesting history, being the last country in Europe to use colour.

Thank you for this excellent doc! I'm an Israeli, born in 1975, and I've learned a lot. I don't know when my family bought our first TV set, but the first colour TV arrived when I was 6. Before that, my brothers and I used to watch some colour animation for kids at neighbours' who had one. BTW the educational programs were excellent. Many B&W programs were re-runned for many years. We all loved them and enjoyed watching them when we were sick, or pretended to be sick in order to avoid school. For example, there were programs in English that we started watching and rewatching as small kids before we even started learning English at school. Oddly, watching the educational programs at school itself was actually less common, at least where I used to live. We didn't have a TV in class.

Please do a docu on South African TV. The "ungodly box" was long blocked by Albert Herzog, minister of telecommunications and introduction was comparitively late in 1976.

Great documentary, and the Eurovision connection is fascinating. I belive the BBC had to loan the IBA colour equipment for the 1979 Eurovision Song Contest, which they also had to do to RTÉ following Ireland's first win at the start of the decade. Irrespective of how it was shown locally, the EBU would have insisted on it being filmed and broadcast internationally in colour, but you can certainly tell the Israelis weren't used to colour when they hosted for the first time. Today, of course, Israel has one of the most advanced television industries in the world. Their third hosting of Eurovision four years ago was exceptional (if we don't talk about Madonna!)

I remember this. TV wasn't popular until 1977. Israel won the World Basketball Cup and Eurovision then, and B&W just didn't capture the pageantry of the events.

What a fascinating tale - who knew ? Certainly not me, having worked all my career as a technician in TV , through to digital etc. I never knew...........! Great work Adam.

Finally, an Israel video without the controversial uncontributing comments. Excellent work :D

So, with the colour eraser and the eraser-eraser, viewers essentially got an NTSC experience? Constantly having to manually adjust the hue? 😏

Thanks for the documentary, helped clear things up about Israel’s TV History

In case no one has gone into the details of the colorburst signal, every scan line of a color signal (regardless of the standard) has a short waveform added to it before each line begins at the left edge of the screen. This signal tells the TV that the line contains color and is used to align the color decoding circuit with the color signal embedded in the picture. So, a circuit that simply 'mutes' the broadcast signal for a few microseconds at the start of each scanline will cause the TV to remain in black and white mode.

South Africa was also late to the party with television. They held out until the 1970s (but unlike Israel, had colour from the start) With South Africa, it was political, not a great deal of imported programmes would be suitable under Apartheid policies, the last thing the NP would hacve wanted is black people seen on South African TV being seen as human, let alone equal alongside white people.

I'm surprised the Israeli government didn't jam those overseas TV broadcasts

What about the Swiss journey to colour? Although it was fairly quick, some cantons still had a lot of local programming in black and white, and if I remember rightly, it wasn't until the late 70's that all local programming was in colour.

Wow... that is the most petty and pointless act of dictatorship I've ever heard.

Certainly an interesting story

Interesting... it was only three years after Portugal got his first colour broacasts. An interesting story behind them, too. It envolves some politics - PAL vs SECAM - but in comparison to Spain, it's neighbour, it took them a while to have colour. But at least, we didn't have colour erasers!

More please Adam your documentaries are fascinating and very informative keep up the good work 👍

This is fantastic! Well done Adam!

I loved seeing the old Australian footage in this video. I'm an Aussie, and it's always fascinating seeing footage from the mid century.

The need to adjust the colour every now and then seems like the tint dial on NTSC sets. The reference signal that tells the receiver the "correct" colour being missing that seems logical.

Bonkers how each country felt so differently about the introduction of colour tv! So interesting ❤

Such a great documentary! I Didn't knew the story behind color TV in my country! Thanks a lot for it

It’s staggers, the mind that such a technologically advanced country was so backwards for so long I mean, it blows my mind

Would like to see an episode on Italy's transition in colour and how an Italian-languaged TV channel from then communist Yugoslavia became immensely popular in Italy before Rai could launch their own colour TV service

Excellent documentary Adam. I do enjoy your videos, and this was a corker sir! I'm very interested in TV history, and your research here has told me a story I did not know about. Thank you! All the best with your future endeavours, may you continue to produce high quality content! Cheers my friend; 🙂

Seems so bizarre to me, in 1979 I was a college student and we just got cable tv with 32 channels and I think basically all the network tv shows had all switched to color in 1966-67.

I think it was back in the late 70's that I was living in Israel, and it always sticks in my mind, how many times a night Kojak was on, picked up from many of the Arab countries..I developed a deep loathing for Kojak.

I had an old 12 volt portable B & W TV set in a shack in the hills in Australia from 1984-1987. No mains power. It ran off a car battery, powered up by a small windmill, on trickle charge. Colour would have been nice but the programs didn’t get any better. When I left I took the TV set with me. It was still working into the 2000s when the Australia Government closed down the analog system replacing it with digital.

Ironic as Jewish talent in the USA, UK etc had a lot to do with the establishment of TV in many nations. Apartheid South Africa resisted TV for even longer. They then bought all the TV equipment, at a bargain price, from the 1972 Munich Olympics. An event the nation was excluded from. Possibly Black and White TV was a political problem. Mind you so would colour TV.

For some reason this isn’t showing in my subscription list… but great as always

Absolutely fascinating & utterly bizarre. I've watched this twice & still can't fully comprehend why there was so much official opposition to colour TV. Even in the Soviet block they didn't do anything that stupid. Thanks the for video, Adam.

1) David Ben Gurion was a bookworm and had an extensive library in his house. 2) some early Israelis might have associated television with the Nazis (because of Paul Nipkow's 1930s Nazi German broadcasts hawking all sorts of "Strength through Joy" stuff).

I'm Israeli and never knew any of this! Fascinating stuff.

We in the United States had adopted color TV back in the mid-to-late 60s and you had other countries like Germany. France. Italy. Britain. North Korea. South Korea. Canada. Australia. New Zealand. Japan. China. The Former Soviet Union. Mexico. Who were all adopting color television as the broadcast standard in the 60s and 70s

The Philippines maybe one of the first countries in the world to adopt Color TV but if this channel will be creating content soon about their color TV adoption, I'm sure it will be a challenge especially when looking for credible content and videos online. Many archives are either lost, destroyed, or not yet converted to digital.

Great to have Eli back in the booth and its like he never missed a step….Great first game for the team as well…..Great start to the season,Bring on Texas and Roll Tide

the frequency used to decode the color is set with the burst in the blank area. Setting a wrong burst there means the color decoder cannot work. the solution is to manually tune a local oscillator to roughly the required frequency

In Italy 📺 started in the ^50 and became one of the best. Color instead was delayed until 1977, only for political reasons. The communist party wanted the French Russian system secam, and others thought was a useless expensive gadget. But, as in Israelite, the tv manufacturers built a network of pirate transmitters to relay neighbour's signals, mainly Swiss

Interesting fact South Africa had NO TV until 1976 !

Thank you for this history insight it was very interesting. 👍🏽❤️👏🏽 Greetings from Israel

Wow i didn't know that, Israel (knowing for their science and technological progress) literally one of the last country on earth that officially broadcast color television, only ahead of some sub-saharan Africa, even my home Country, Indonesia is already broadcast color TV program since 1968 and fully broadcast all channel in color since 1977

It's important to understand the political implications of this too. Until the late 1970s Israel had been run by socialist governments who had more in common with communism than capitalism. This explains the argument that colour tv was an unnecessary, extravagant luxury.

Next: Why almost all former Warsaw Pact countries adopted SECAM?

I just realized that your intro tune is a slowed down version of the tune to "Rhythm is a Dancer", neat!

I find it somewhat so amusing that some TV advancements during the 20th century have the involvement of either Football or the Eurovision contest, we want to see our footy and out pop stars in the best way possible! xD

Great documentary. Israel's founding political party from 1948 to 1977 was very socialist oriented. TV was western decadence and would create inequality for those who couldn't afford it. Color TV's had heavy tariffs (around 150%), so only very few could afford them. One interesting aspect of the story you didn't mention, was that close to the 1981 elections, the ruling Likud (anti-socialist) government declared a significant reduction on the color TV import tax, making these sets more affordable for their lower class voter base. There was widespread claims of buying votes from the socialist opposition parties. Today, there is still a tariff on TV's above 50", being attributed to Israel's socialist egalitarian roots.

It's seems when new countries are formed, they want to create their own culture, sense of national pride and ways to make them stand out in the world stage.

Fascinating! I never heard about this.

It's just a matter of immersion, isn't it? If their government thought TV was a distraction and had a detrimental influence (for which there are valid arguments), then suppressing colour would curtail its ability to captivate audiences. Colour TV is more life-like, and can thus make a more powerful impression.

Another interesting documentary, quite enjoyed it. If possible, could you cover the switchover in the Soviet Union/the eastern bloc?

Well, that was a crazy story I never knew about. Shows how people can get irrationally focused on some stupid non-issue and turn it into a major thing.

Wow! Nice work.

Are You Being Served! Just finished binge watching it.😊

1:26 That’s not entirely accurate: by the time television launched in Israel (in 1966), there were 3 radio stations in operation - two of which were operated by the IBA, and the third was the Army Radio (or Galei Tzahal)

You're right. I was living in Israel in 1979. Broadcasting Eurovision in color was much discussed.

You should also do a story about how one station in Pittsburgh PA USA stayed in black and white until the mid 1980s

"We must force black and white TV signals to discourage the citizens from spending too much on color TV sets!" >citizens spend even more to get color back * surprised Pikachu face *

@8:23 - SECAM stands for Specially Engineered Contrary to the American Method LOL Love those French engineers and their inventions.

I was in Iran last year. Do you think you could make a video on the history of TV in that country?

Israel: TV for thee but not for me

I was born in '77 in the US and thought it was hilarious my parents had to watch TV in black and white when they were growing up. Little did I know it was still happening in Israel. I can't believe the Israeli citizens put up with this nonsense. It doesn't make sense on any level.

Enjoying these documentaries. Hopefully we will get one on South African tv history? That needs a deep dive.

amazing documentaries.. can you make any documentaries about the "struggling" process of digital terrestrial television transition in Indonesia ? altough indonesia ceased their analogue broadcast recently (yes, it recently).. it takes so many years to do official digital television services in indonesia, starting from late 2020 using DVB-T2 system some broadcaster in indonesia already have the 4K production equipment before 2020 (like SONY HDC-4300 camera, Ikegami HDK-97A 4K by CCU-out, SONY HXC-FB80 by CCU-out or even ROSS Video mixer that support 4K video through 6G even 12G-SDI) but at that time, they continued to transmit their program using Analogue PAL transmission because the official digital terrestrial broadcasting had not started until late 2020 official Digital terrestrial broadcasting started late 2020, simulcasting ONLY 2 and half-year. Indonesia began switching OFF the Analogue broadcast at late 2022 until August 2023. Altough, official rejected the statement of "digital broadcast in indonesia started officially at 2020" because they think that indonesia "started" the digital terrestrial broadcast back to 2009 when using DVB-T system (but some people think, it was only a long experimental or trials and errors to do digital broadcast, creating a mature preset of transmission etc etc) I think this should be a world record for fastest and most rapidly digital terrestrial television transition in the world, regarding on the size of Indonesia, the COVID pandemic situation, economic recession. last but not least, dont be shocked, if at the begining of 2021, many TV station indonesia (terrestrial broadcast) still broadcasted their program mostly at 4:3 SDTV. But at the mid of 2022, almost 100% of TV station suddenly (and rapidly) completed their migration to 16:9 HDTV broadcast (even a developed countries like Japan, US i think it took a long time to migrate their 4:3 NTSC broadcast to 16:9 HDTV)

4:19 - The IBA Logo is a Minora doubling as a TV Tower! LOL creative! Nice! Y'all ever notice that?

Here in peru while the first tv broadcast was in 1958 there wasnt any full time color color tv until the 1980s but Channel 4 did air in color around the 1970s. Oddly enough not only do more homes here have a tv than say have an oven but analog was only discontinued recently in 2020.

Interesting history of Color tv introduction The USA was first in 1953, with NTSC. Cuba for a brief period (1958-1959 thanks to US assistance) became the second country in the world to have color tv (Until Castro arrived) in Africa Zanzibar (were Freddie Mercury was born) was the first area on the African continent to have color tv ! In Japan NHK was the first in Asia 1960. The UK was the first in 1966 (experimental tests go back to 1955 or earlier.) Germany was the first in continental Europe in 1967 ( funny fact is there were two cameras on in B&W and the other in Color when the Chancellor pushed the big red button to initiate color broadcasting the camera man in his excitement switched on the color transmitter 2 seconds to early before the chancellor pushed the button!

This videos says more about controlling and hypocritical governments, than television.

I don't remember when we switch to colour broadcast in Hungary, but I remember when I was child in early 90s, there was the SECAM-PAL switch, and before it there was some experimental Broadcast. There was a Disney mix program with cartoons and movies. The first experiment I remember was "The Black Hole" movie in the Disney block. I watch it trough a dual standard compatible Aiwa VHS VCR and Samsung TV. The VCR was turned on and used its tuner. When the movie started, there was some flicker for a second, then the fluorescent display of the VCR changed the colour system mark from MESECAM to PAL. I didnt notice picture quality change, but it was interesting for me. There was an other story related to Disney programme, but it affected most of the hungarian childrens of the age. In the middle of a Duck Tales episode there was an interruption with sad music... The prime minister passed away.

I find the British broadcast fees and their manhunts for TV receivers far more surreal.

For Israel, Eurovision is something like Football for Brazil. A true national passion. Also, some of the kid's programming became legendary. Nice video, btw. As Israelis would say: כל הכבוד

b/w doess have some advantages, for one it has better range and picture clarity

In 1958, Cuba was the second country in the world (after the United States) to begin color broadcasting!!

Israeli should have introduced color TV early. It would have helped domestic production of color TV sets and export it to neighboring countries and worldwide including USA and Europe. Color TV was hot commodity then so Israe could have profited from such economic boom like Japan and South Korea did. Sony Panasonic Samsung LG are still dominant TV brands today.

Like Israel, in Italy too only in 1977 we have got tv color! Political reasons!

as an Israeli after the video i asked my father about why and apparently it's because a big chunk of the immigrants we're russians who brought socialist ideals basically they didn't want that rich people would watch tv in color while others don't because they don't have the money also development progress wasn't only with television for example McDonald's started in Israel only in 1993 and nickelodeon started full broadcasting 10 years later in 2003

It is said that that the Anti-Eraser (אנטי מחיקון) signifies the born of of Israel as Startup nation.

South Africa didn't have TV at all until 1976, by which time it went straight to colour, but Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) had it from 1960, though wasn't able to upgrade to colour because of sanctions so it only went colour until 1984, four years after independence. When I lived in Nigeria in 1976-78, it had colour, but Ghana didn't get it until 1985!

They didn't want color TV and half a century later they could hack any smartphone in the world, I wonder if the Pegasus guys are descendants of the Anti-Eraser guys 🤔

In the Philippines, the history of television is interesting. From the introduction, the martial law to today.

In Trinidad and Tobago, the main cable company didnt even roll out HD cable properly until around 2016. Since then other companies have come up and contributed to much needed competition. The local broadcast scene is still quite crap though. They pretty much waited for this rollout to look towards HD solutions and really around 2018-19 upgraded their systems to be "HD". But a grand majority of their programming still remains in Standard Definition, particularly lesser viewed programs or foreign shows which they never got around to getting an HD release for.

Excellent explanation

So interesting. I myself lived in Jordan 1984-1989 and could see Israeli TV on our TV set. It was in colour. Same as the Jordanian. I remember watching Saudi Arabian TV.. But would get nightmares because they showed executions on TV.

Television in South Africa was introduced in 1976

Interesting. IIRC, the Soviet Union began broadcasting in color like a decade or two before they had started producing color televisions. Almost the polar opposite situation to Israel.

you should also do a video on south african tv that appeared in 1976 and was kinda forced on them because they didn't want to put tv in south africa to not break the monopoly of the sabc as well as not show black with white people