MTV Launches Online in Israel

LONDON/TEL
AVIV, October 23: MTV Networks International’s (MTVNI) Emerging Markets group,
in partnership with Israeli television and digital media organization Ananey
Communications, has revealed plans to launch MTV Israel this month as a free,
on-demand video-enabled, Hebrew-language Internet service.

Located at
www.mtv.co.il, MTV Israel will provide Israeli youths with a new full-screen
television experience that showcases music videos from both international and
locally renowned artists. There will also be a raft of popular MTV shows
including Punk’d, Pimp
My Ride, Beavis and
Butthead and The
Virgin Diaries
translated into Hebrew, as well as a wide range of locally produced shows.
Local programs available from launch include Ha’Mahadura, an anarchic look at celebrity and
music news, Ha’Monit,
a comedic animated series featuring Israeli celebrities in the back of a taxi
cab, and MTV News,
with both local and global fashion, music and lifestyle news presented by
Israeli MTV hosts.

Users can
create their own personalized playlists from a wide range of regularly updated
content. MTV.co.il is also home to a music-themed, social-networking community
as well as live concerts, music reviews, interviews, live chats and content
created by local artists.

The launch of
MTV in Israel is the latest addition to a growing portfolio of MTVNI channel
brands. A Hebrew-language Nickelodeon channel currently reaches approximately
1.2 million households via cable and satellite along with an English-language service,
MTV European, which is broadcast to 1.4 million households. Additionally, MTVNI
Emerging Markets operates three mobile TV services in Israel—MTV Music,
MTV Shorts and Nickelodeon Israel–with 100 percent mobile coverage.

Bhavneet Singh,
the managing director and senior VP of emerging markets at MTVNI, commented:
“There is an incredibly high internet penetration in Israel with more than 75
percent of the population connected and a huge percentage of those people with
broadband. Israeli youths are really ahead of the game when it comes to digital
media and our research shows that they spend as much time online as they do
watching TV. MTV Israel is much more than just music—it is a youth
lifestyle brand—and we’re proud to be working with Ananey to give Israel’s
youth the very best content in the digital space, whenever and wherever they
want it.”

—By Irene
Lew