And the industry body - established by then-Broadcasting Minister Richard Prebble in 1989 - was built to service the commercial market. It has always been used to create commercial content.

It only funds projects from producers who have the backing of broadcasters, and broadcasters back programmes that will have mass appeal and deliver a commercial return.

The good news is that there is a high level of local content, both jewels and junk. The broadcasters do okay - they sell ad revenue around taxpayer-funded shows like Outrageous Fortune.

Independent producers do well, and the system has been applauded by all those who see a bulk of local content - good and bad - as being equivalent to public broadcasting.

The down side of taxpayer funding for commercial TV is that minority interest content struggles to survive.

More to the point, non-commercial broadcasting is largely ignored. Radio New Zealand - with one of New Zealand's most important news operations - is a case in point.

In this year's Budget the Government froze Radio New Zealand National and Concert FM funding for four years at $35 million. The place survives on the smell of an oily rag.

Yet in these days when RNZ heads for more tough times, NZ On Air is not focused on New Zealand's only real public broadcaster, but on helping commercial TV through an advertising downturn.

CLOTHES HORSE

How long will it be until TV3 Nightline host Samantha Hayes starts considering options at TVNZ?

We understand the two parties have corresponded but it is not clear if discussion has moved beyond making a friendly acquaintance.

Hayes has been accorded the role once held by Kate Hawkesby on TV One - as a fashion industry clothes horse.

She has been heavily marketed by TV3 and in its December issue Metro magazine hailed the 24-year-old Auckland's sexiest woman, which presumably will help her CV as a newscaster.

But where would Hayes fit at TVNZ?

Maybe she could be the new face of TVNZ 7 when it is shown on the Sky platform.

A source says TVNZ head of news and current affairs Anthony Flannery is already being besieged by bright young things in the digital division, hankering to anchor the news.

ST RUPERT

Lambasted by the left as a media pariah, Rupert Murdoch is emerging as a white knight for the newspaper biz.

Murdoch - whose New Zealand interests are through News Corporation's controlling stake in Sky Television - has launched an assault on the global media behemoth Google, which in March started selling advertising around aggregated news content in its US news site with little compensation.