Israeli cable drops BBC World

Israeli cable television operators abruptly dropped the BBC World news channel from their roster of stations today after the two sides failed to reach a financial agreement.

Cable company spokeswoman Aliza Khoury said the decision was taken after talks between both sides, and was based on the BBC’s low viewer ratings and not on the BBC’s reporting of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has been widely criticised in Israel as biased in favour of the Palestinians.