Moti Zisser on Channel 2 debt deal: 'I feel like an idiot'
By Asaf Carmel
Businessman Moti Zisser, a member of the Canne group which bid and lost on the tender for the operation of Channel 2, has lashed out over a recent deal between the tender winners and production companies. He says he will demand reimbursement from the Second Authority of NIS 11 million the group invested in preparing the bid.
The deal, reported in full by Haaretz on Monday, calls for the full erasure of the concessionaires' historical debts, estimated by the Second Authority at tens of millions of shekels. In exchange the franchisees will undertake to invest 18% of their broadcasting costs in top-tier programming and to establish a small fund that will operate for a period of five years, to finance quality content.
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Zisser says that it is unreasonable for producers, with the approval of the Second Authority, to waive the content requirement based on which his group lost the tender.
During the course of negotiations in the past few months between concessionaires and producers, the question of how losing bidders Canne and Telad would be compensated was also discussed, with an eye to avoiding legal proceedings against the new rules of the game in the television market.
"When we analyzed what obstacles preventing implementation of the new arrangements, this was one issue that was raised," one source involved in the negotiations said. Reshet said it does not know what the issue is about, whereas a spokesman for Keshet said that it "never happened".
"I can't explain how idiotic I feel," Zisser said. "I have been doing business for 25 years in places that have respect for people who wish to do business, but here I have learned a fascinating lesson on the destruction of trust of people who want to do things in this country. This was a case of unprecedented brazenness. It's very simple. Terms were set for a tender, which we lost because we were willing to offer less for these terms, and other parties offered more because they never intended to honor the commitments they signed on. Now the state is helping them to blatantly violate their commitments, and this at our expense."
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