Barring any last-minute surprises, the Knesset is expected to approve on Tuesday the government's decision to postpone the date on which the new public broadcasting corporation is slated to begin operations. According to the decision, which was presented by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon last week, the new public broadcasting body will go on the air in April 2017, and not in October of this year as originally scheduled. Assuming that everything goes as planned, the Knesset will approve the move, via a rapid legislation process. Shortly before midnight on Monday, the amendment to the new public broadcaster law was scheduled to undergo its first Knesset reading. At 9 a.m. Tuesday, the Knesset Finance Committee, headed by Labor MK Eitan Cabel, convened to prepare the bill for its second and third readings. Kulanu MK Roy Folkman noted that the committee had yet to decide on several key issues, such as temporarily moving the corporation's television studios to Modiin, in central Israel, where the studios of Israeli cable's Russian-language Channel 9 are located, and from where the corporation's radio stations will broadcast. Netanyahu had originally sought to push back the closure date for the Israel Broadcasting Authority to early 2018, but in the end a compromise suggested by Kahlon was accepted, by which the new public broadcasting corporation will go on the air in Jan. 1, 2017 or by April 30, 2017 at the latest. Kahlon and the heads of the Finance Ministry's Budget Department were concerned that postponing the IBA's closure would cost the Treasury at least 550 million shekels ($144 million), after the Finance Ministry had already invested NIS 600 million ($157 million) in the new enterprise. However, the debate over the new corporation is currently focused on other numbers, which indicate that each month the launch of the new public broadcaster is delayed will only cost NIS 8 million to NIS 10 million ($2 million to $2.6 million), NIS 32 million to NIS 40 million ($8.4 million to $10.5 million) in total if the launch is postponed until January 1, 2017, or NIS 56 million to 70 million ($14.7 million to $18.4 million) if it is postponed until April 30, 2017.
