Ron Jacobsohn examins JLTV's Coverage of the 19th Maccabiah Games

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• published: 15 May 2016
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Ron Jacobsohn, JN1 Correspondent: Jewish Life Television is the only international broadcaster to show the Maccabiah games live and give the Jews of the world a glimpse of what is going on at the Jewish Olympics. JLTV broke its own record as people in 94 countries watched the Live coverage of the opening ceremony of the Maccabiah from Teddy Stadium. Brad Pomerance, Sr. VP, JLTV: I think that we had a sense of what was going to happen once we got here for the 19th Maccabiah games, in 2009 it was a trail run and I think we're kind of a well-oiled machine, we're delivering about 45 minutes of original content every night for a one-hour block. We're covering opening and closing live, for opening ceremonies coverage we tract that individuals from 94 nations who are watching opening ceremonies live on JLTV.tv, so clearly we know we have an international audience and by the way, in the Top Ten it was not English speaking countries. Of course, US and Canada, but Mexico, Argentina, Germany, Chile, I mean those were the top ten so we have a real sense that the entire world both Jewish and non-Jewish is watching JLTV's Maccabiah coverage. Shay Yuval is one of the around 50 staffers JLTV has on the ground to help it cover the 19th Maccabiah. Shay Yuval, JLTV Correspondent: It's a real great feeling, you know, everywhere you go there can be some anti-Semitism. When you come here you feel proud and you're all like what to say who you are and what I find is a lot of people are, you know, buying a little red string from the Kotel or they're buying their Hamsa and they're wearing it because now is the time when you really feel proud to be a Jew and show off and you, you know, you look around your fellow athletes or other people and you kind of go "we got it going on", you know? "We're the same". I was so lucky that I got the chance to run around and meet so many athletes, I met Garrett Weber-Gale, who has an Olympian won gold, I met Lenny Krayzelburg, I met Amare Stoudemire, who's really really tall and I actually got the chance to ask him if he would sing some Hebrew song with me, we're going to do that interview cause he does have a Jewish heritage and like who gets to do that? Who gets to meet all these wonderful people and in this circumstance everybody is just full of smiles and happy to do it. So many people are humble and gracious. I interviewed the rugby Australian team and it's very demanding and brutal sport, and I thought ok they're going to be aggressive after they win, they were so kind to me, they threw me in the air which was fun and you know, just how humble and kind, it's just been such a wonderful experience. 25-year old Adam Blazer is the Chief Operating Officer at JLTV and is responsible for the massive expansion of the network since its inception six-years ago. Adam Blazer, COO, JLTV: Today we're in 42-million homes across the United States available on Time-Warner, Comcast, DirecTV and a number of other affiliates Bright House and Atlantic Broadband, you know, took time, it took four or five years to really get the distribution platform that we've reached today so we're continuing to reach out to more affiliates across the United States and in Canada and now we're also looking very heavily at programming opportunities from the original acquisition site so that's a lot of what Brad is heading up as well. Our main focus is North America. The United States is a huge market, 110-million plus cable homes. So our priority right now is expending as much as we can in the United States and in Canada. Internationally, it's something that we look, that we know eventually we'll want to address, but it's been kind of in the background, our mission is to be the place people feel comfortable to go to learn about Jewish culture, values, history. Ron Jacobsohn, JN1 Correspondent: And JLTV is of course our affiliate station in the US, which broadcasts JN1 five times daily across the over 40-million cable homes it reaches in North America. For JN1 I am Ron Jacobsohn at the JLTV broadcasting center at Kfar HaMaccabia.