If CNN falls in a forest will anyone notice?

A large Israeli cable system provider dropped CNN from their line-up reports the Jerusalem Post.

In a surprise move, HOT Television terminated its contract with CNN on Thursday, despite saying on Tuesday that it would continue to broadcast the international news channel at least until November 10th.

"The decision to end our contract with CNN comes after the network's chief executive in the Middle Eastern region, Ron Ciccone, refused to come to Israel to negotiate with us," said Yossi Lubaton, HOT's Vice President of marketing. "We feel that they never took seriously the negotiations and did not make an offer reasonable enough to allow us to enter into serious negotiations."

CNN contends however, that over the last few months, they have made repeated contract offers to HOT, not one of which was met with a "serious" counter-offer, leading to a breakdown in negotiations between the two companies, with HOT accusing the network of "unrealistic" demands and CNN describing an initial offer from the country's largest cable provider as "insulting."

HOT, under CEO David Kamenitz, has embarked on an aggressive cost-cutting campaign that seeks to lower company expenses by 30 percent to 40%. Earlier this month, HOT refused to match the terms of its previous contract with CNN, saying expectations that it do so were "unrealistic" because CNN had lost its status as the top-rated news network to Fox News.

In 2002, Fox passed CNN as the most-watched cable news network. Earlier this week, the Knesset Economics Committee summoned representatives of HOT and CNN to a special committee session in a last ditch attempt to prevent HOT from dropping broadcasts of the news channel, however the effort was in vain.

The question becomes (with the exception of Meretz voters, Peace Now members, and Shimon Peres) will any Israeli notice CNN is off the air?