Wellington, March 24 NZPA - Scrapping TVNZ's charter spells doom for public broadcasting and will relegate the network to idiot box status, critics of the Government's decision say.

Prime Minister John Key announced yesterday the charter would be gone by the end of the year and the $15 million TVNZ gets for locally made programmes would be opened up as a contestable fund for all the channels.

He said the charter had not worked and he did not think dumping it would make much difference because TVNZ would probably win most of the funding anyway.

But the Green Party said the charter was designed to foster a sense of national identity, and without it viewers would start to wonder why the state should own a fully commercial channel that was hard to distinguish from any other.

"A state broadcaster intent on maximising profits will steer clear of commissioning anything not made for maximum return of commercial investment," said MP Sue Kedgley.

"Overseas-owned media will be able to bid for the contestable fund ... inevitably the quality of programmes on TV1 will be further eroded."

The Alliance Party said getting rid of the charter signalled the end of any "token commitment" to meaningful public broadcasting.

"Over the past decades we have seen the hollowing out of informative and intelligent shows, funding for quality public interest programming slashed, and a gradual descent into moronic low-grade commercialism," said the party's broadcasting spokeswoman Sarah Campbell.

"The role of television to promote democratic debate has been killed off by a cash-driven, shallow media culture that does infotainment and reality TV."

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