RULES DILUTED

On that point, we are disappointed in the decision to allow a dilution of the Sunday morning advertising restrictions.

The Government could extract a commitment to ensure other public interest content is commissioned and scheduled in prime time in return for such concessions.

It will be very interesting to see if the serious current affairs content, for example, Q&A, The Hui, and The Nation continue.

Hopefully they will survive like the similar TV programmes on Saturday mornings.

If they don’t, it will leave New Zealand audiences without any substantive television current affairs.

The Coalition for Better Broadcasting therefore reiterates its call for the Government to unfreeze the funding for Radio New Zealand and NZ on Air.

And to explore the options for re-establishing a non-commercial public television channel which can schedule important genres that have become commercially unattractive.