In Israel, Every Hour’s Prime Time : Broadcasting: Since the Scud missile attacks, around-the-clock news and escapist fare on TV and radio are the No. 1 forms of entertainment.

As long as the sun is in the sky, Israeli life has retained a semblance of normalcy. People fill the streets, traffic is as bad as ever, and movie theaters, restaurants and bars are gradually staying open later and later.

But as soon as the sun sinks across the Mediterranean coastline, the mood changes. People leave work early in order to get home before dark. By the time dusk gives way to darkness, the streets are nearly empty.

“At 5 o’clock, an internal timer flips on in every Israeli’s stomach,” said Tel Aviv satirist Yair Garbuz. “We all wait for the sirens to blare. While we wait, we sit around and eat non-stop. There’s nothing else to do.”

Israelis have turned inward since the first Scud missiles landed here, and around-the-clock television and radio broadcasts have become the No. 1 form of entertainment. The country with the highest per capita annual theater attendance in the world has exchanged its cultural events and social outings for Charlie Chaplin films, endless news and analysis programs and skits that poke fun in a style designed to be as painless as possible.

Arye Mekel, the general director of the Israel Broadcasting Authority, which controls the main television station and most radio stations, is proud of the special programming put together for the emergency period.

“We are emphasizing middle-of-the-road material that appeals to everybody,” he said, and he cited surveys that show a 92% approval rating for the radio broadcasts since the war began.

TV and radio have a captive audience these days.(“Every hour is prime time,” one pundit said.) Video rental libraries have been cleaned out of comedies for weeks, but the main forms of entertainment have become reruns, old movies, variety shows and news. Lots of news.

Mekel’s staff was quick to put together a series of evening variety shows hosted by leading entertainers. Guests include everyone from deaf Israelis who talk about how they “beat” the sirens to popular singers and visiting celebrities who perform live.

“We filmed in the afternoon, with almost nobody in the audience,” said Rivka Michaeli, one of Israel’s most popular television hosts whose latest show was broadcast last Saturday night. “We had to hurry, because all of the crew wanted to finish before dark. We finished, but before I had left the studio, the sirens went off.

“Israel has undergone an important collective experience,” Michaeli said afterward. “Everyone did it at home, and now we are in the process of sharing examples of how we managed. It’s more or less the same for taxi drivers, judges, artists and everybody else.”

Mekel acknowledged that the captive audience puts added responsibility on the IBA, which must try to satisfy every listener and viewer. (Israel has one television station in addition to the IBAs, but it broadcasts just 11 hours a day and has a tiny budget. The main IBA radio station has merged with Army Radio for the duration of the emergency. Thus, one TV station and one radio station command nearly the entire audience.)

Mekel calls the result middle of the road, but Garbuz termed it “the lowest form of lowest common denominator.” He complained that every radio or television program has taken on a boring sameness and, “They always worry that people won’t understand, so they reduce material to the simplest form. Some of the television shows look like a factory talent show at a very small factory.”

If the programming is so bad, why don’t more people just turn it off? For one thing, when people stay home every night, they reach their limit on family togetherness, and the boob tube provides an escape.

More important, however, is the fact that many Israelis have complained they do not hear the blaring sirens. To make sure that nobody is caught unaware, radio and television interrupt their programming and broadcast the wailing noise at full volume.

“We always have the TV and the radio on in the background to be sure we hear sirens,” Garbuz said.

In the early days of the war, many families took turns sitting by the radio all night, to be sure that nobody would sleep through a Scud attack. The solution to this wave of sleepless nights: a special radio frequency that broadcasts silence between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. The only thing to interrupt the non-program is the siren.