About HOT3

HOT3

HOT3, styled as HOT3 and also available in high definition as HOT3 HD, is an Israeli television channel of the cable television company HOT. It is the flagship entertainment channel of HOT, whose headquarters are at Yakum in the Central District, and it carries original Israeli drama and comedy alongside acquired series in Hebrew. First introduced as The Family Channel in the early 1990s and later known simply as Channel 3, it was one of the first exclusive channels of regulated cable television in Israel, and it evolved from the former cable Channel 3 family channel into the principal home of HOT's own productions.

Few Israeli channels carry as much of the country's cable history as HOT3. Founded at the very start of legal cable television in Israel, it began with imported drama and soap opera, became the Israeli home of many of the world's most successful series, lost that position in a rights dispute in 2002, and rebuilt itself around original Israeli production. Its story is therefore both a channel history and a history of how Israeli cable television grew from a handful of channels into a competitive multichannel market.

Founding with ICP in 1989 and 1990

The channel was founded by Udi Miron in 1989 together with the establishment of ICP, Israel Cable Programming, and it was one of the first cable channels in Israel, with its launch in 1990. Reference listings record its former names as Arutz HaMishpaha, The Family Channel, from 1989 to 1994, and Arutz 3, Channel 3, from 1994 to March 2004. The channel began, in other words, as the family channel of the new cable systems, at a time when regulated cable television itself was new to Israel.

At first, the channel's programme schedule mostly included dramas, some American shows from the past, such as Soap and All in the Family, soap operas such as The Young and the Restless, and a few experimental original productions. That early mixture is characteristic of the first years of cable in many countries: library programming and imported serials filled the schedule while a local production culture slowly developed around the new channels.

The Best Shows in the World

Within a few years, the channel became the Israeli home of many successful television shows from America and other countries, adding the tagline The best shows in the world. As Channel 3, it was the place Israeli cable viewers associated with prestige imported drama and comedy, and its schedule defined what international television looked like to a generation of subscribers who had previously known only the state broadcaster's channels and the first commercial competition.

That position depended on supply agreements, above all with one studio. In 2002, the channel lost its privileged position due to a financial dispute with Warner Bros. Television Studios, its main source, and could not continue to air content distributed by Warner. As a result, Channel 3 lost shows such as Friends, ER, The Sopranos and The West Wing, which were soon purchased by other Israeli channels. The loss of four of the most prominent series in world television at that time forced a fundamental change in the channel's identity.

Rebuilding Around Original Content

Since the Warner dispute, the channel has added more and more original content while continuing to air non-Warner purchased shows. The shift made HOT3, over time, less a showcase for one studio's catalogue and more a commissioner of Israeli drama and entertainment. Original production gave the channel programmes that no rival could buy away from it, and it tied the channel's fortunes to the Israeli creative industry rather than to a single distribution deal.

The results of that strategy are visible in the channel's best-known originals. Zaguri Imperia, created by Maor Zaguri and produced by HOT, is an Israeli comedy-drama whose first season was broadcast on HOT3 between 8 April and 4 June 2014, with a second season opening on 3 February 2015 and ending on 1 April 2015. The series, following the Zaguri family of Beersheba after a son disowned by his father returns home following his grandfather's death, was described as both one of the most expensive and one of the most successful series ever to air on Israeli television. BeTipul, the drama about a psychologist who treats patients through the week and then seeks treatment himself, is likewise listed among the channel's series in programme databases, and it became one of the most internationally adapted Israeli formats of its era.

Becoming HOT3 in 2004

The channel's name was changed to Hot 3 in 2004, not long after the three Israeli cable companies united under the name HOT. The parent company itself was founded on 18 August 2003 as a union of the three national cable companies in Israel, Matav, Tevel and Golden Channels, a merger linked directly to the growing competition from the local satellite provider yes. The unified HOT brand gave the old Channel 3 its present identity as HOT3, the third channel and entertainment flagship of the combined cable operator.

HOT offers about two hundred local and foreign-language channels in its digital television services, along with several exclusive channels under the HOT brand that are not available from the competing yes company. Within that line-up, HOT3 occupies the central entertainment position its predecessor held on the old cable systems, and its Yakum-based operator pairs it with video-on-demand and other HOT services. The batch record for this profile lists the channel's official platform as hot.net.il, the HOT group's site.

Good Evening with Guy Pines

To date, the longest-running original show on the channel was Good Evening with Guy Pines, a televised entertainment magazine hosted by Guy Pines covering stories from Israel and the world. The show aired at least four times a week for thirteen seasons between 1997 and 2010, and an earlier version was the Israeli Entertainment Tonight, also hosted by Pines, which aired from 1994 to 1996. Good Evening with Guy Pines moved to Channel 10 in 2010.

The programme's longevity made it a fixture of the channel across both its Channel 3 and HOT3 identities. An entertainment news magazine of that kind connects a drama-led channel to the wider celebrity and media culture around it, reporting on the same Israeli entertainment world whose series the channel broadcasts. Its thirteen seasons on the channel, beginning before the HOT rebrand and ending six years after it, give HOT3 a continuity of original production that runs alongside its better-known dramas.

High Definition and Widescreen

The channel was also part of Israeli television's transition to high definition. Having produced, in January 2009, the first ever Israeli original drama to be shot in high definition, Pillars of Smoke, known in Hebrew as Timrot Ashan, it launched HOT3 HD in January 2010, providing a high-definition simulcast of HOT3. The sequence matters: the channel's own original production led the technology change, with an Israeli drama made in HD a year before the HD simulcast channel itself began.

In October 2011, after twenty years of broadcasting in the fullscreen 4:3 aspect ratio, the original standard-definition channel was transferred to a widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio broadcast, in accordance with most of its content. Reference listings record the channel's picture formats as 576i standard definition in 16:9 and 1080i high definition. Together, the 2010 HD launch and the 2011 widescreen switch completed the channel's move from the technical world of early-1990s cable to the modern multichannel standard.

Original and Reality Drama in the Later Schedule

As of an edit recorded in 2017, many, but not all, of the channel's external acquisitions had moved to HOT HBO, making room in the schedule for HOT3 to air original and reality dramas. The change continued the direction set after 2002: acquisitions could be housed on a sister service devoted to them, while HOT3 itself concentrated on programmes made for HOT. Programme listings for the channel from the following years reflect that emphasis, with Israeli series such as Queens, from 2018, The Exchange Principle, Dumb and Sirens associated with the channel alongside the established titles of its earlier original era.

This positioning distinguishes HOT3 from a general import channel. Its value to HOT lies in exclusive Israeli stories, Hebrew-language drama and comedy that reflect local life, and reality formats built around Israeli participants. The Zaguri family's Beersheba, the therapy room of BeTipul and the crime-family women of Queens are settings no imported schedule could supply, and they explain why the channel's original-production strategy, adopted out of necessity after the Warner loss, became its permanent identity.

Language, Audience and Place in Israeli Cable

HOT3 broadcasts in Hebrew, Israel's main language, to a national audience across the cable network. Its audience is the HOT subscriber base, and its role is comparable to the flagship entertainment channels of cable operators in other countries: a first window for the operator's own commissions, a home for its longest-running entertainment magazine, and a brand that predates the operator's current name. Because the channel began as one of the first regulated cable channels in the country, long-serving subscribers have known it under three names, The Family Channel, Channel 3 and HOT3, across more than three decades.

The channel also illustrates the structure of Israeli pay television. Two national platforms, the cable company HOT and the satellite company yes, compete with exclusive channels and original productions. HOT3 is HOT's historic answer in entertainment, just as the HOT brand's other exclusive channels cover film, documentary and children's programming. The competition that prompted the cable merger of 2003 is the same competition that pushed HOT3 toward original drama, since exclusive content is the one asset a rival platform cannot simply purchase.

HOT3 Today

For directory users, HOT3 is the Yakum-based flagship entertainment channel of HOT, Israel's cable operator: founded by Udi Miron with ICP in 1989 and launched in 1990 as The Family Channel, renamed Channel 3 in 1994 and HOT3 in 2004, and available in HD as HOT3 HD since January 2010. Its documented landmarks include the loss of the Warner Bros. catalogue in 2002, the thirteen seasons of Good Evening with Guy Pines, the first Israeli original drama shot in HD, Pillars of Smoke, in 2009, and original series such as Zaguri Imperia.

The channel's entry in this directory records its official website through the HOT platform at hot.net.il, its city as Yakum in the Central District, and its language as Hebrew. From experimental original productions in the early 1990s to some of the most expensive and successful series in Israeli television history, HOT3 remains the clearest single record of how Israeli cable entertainment moved from imported library programmes to a mature original-production culture.