Extending back the insight offered by the emerging framework of global television formats, this article examines the production and public reception of the first Israeli sitcom, Krovim-Krovim, produced by Israeli Educational Television (IETV) between 1982 and 1986. As the first fullblown Israeli series and a show modeled on the globally popular sitcom formula, Krovim-Krovim was simultaneously celebrated for its Israeliness and condemned as a potential source of Western 'cultural contamination'. The concerns converging around Krovim-Krovim in 1980s Israel are representative of a larger global trend in that period that witnessed 'the second wave of globalization'. The simplistic media imperialism scenario that still dominates scholarship of these trends fails to grasp the complexities typifying the process of globalization. Representing as they do simultaneous standardization and heterogenization of form and content across borders, global television formats seems to embody these complexities. By reevaluating IETV's sitcom production as an early case of format adaptation this article demonstrates the promises of this fresh outlook for the study of historical as well as contemporary trends in television globalization. By foregrounding the perspective of 'local' producers and critics, this article explores the cultural significance of format adaptation for marginal and belated broadcast systems -like 1980s Israeli television.

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In recent years in the traditional locations where the television industries meet to confer and trade a new buzzword can be heard. On trading floors and in board meetings, in keynote addresses and on expert panels, in French Riviera pavilions and Miami poolside cabanas -wherever executives meet to discuss the latest trends -conversations keep circling back to the question of 'disruption'.Travelling perhaps in the shoes of tech executives from Amazon, YouTube or Netflix, who now regularly join the ranks of television network and content studio executives in their annual soirées, talk of disruption permeates television industry discourse. A quick glance at the programme for the 2019 National Association for Television Programing Executives (NATPE) in Miami or the 2018 MIP Com International Market of Communications Programmes in Cannes echoes that fascination. One NATPE panel rationale articulates this interest in disruption with the profound changes reshaping television audience practices as they are now 'skipping commercials, time-shifting their viewing, and cutting cable'. While this is described as 'scary' for networks who depend on models of 'linear television', this same 'disruption' is also acknowledged as giving media brands 'a lot of power and the ability to evolve their thinking in creative ways' (NATPE, 2019). On the other side of the pond, a similar discussion took place at a MIPCom panel titled, 'Just How Disrupted is the Distribution Game?' that brought together executives from NBCUniversal, ITV Studios, FremantleMedia China and Red Arrow Studios International to discuss new opportunities in the multiplatform age (MIPTrends, 2018). Finally, the same discourse is just as pervasive in the media trade press coverage, where stories like the one in a recent Forbes magazine tells us that 'the future of media' involves 'disruptions ' and 'revolutions' (Alsin, 2018).This label of disruption used to describe the upheavals caused by accelerated technological innovation has become so prevalent that it seems to merit special attention not

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