I wish I could be as confident as some in the independent production sector that we are on the way to a brave new world of public interest broadcasting.
National's new broadcasting minister, Jonathan Coleman, plans to end the TVNZ monopoly on charter funding.
The theory goes that this will release charter-type funds, via New Zealand On Air, to a bunch of creative, lean and hungry companies which will quite happily produce low-rating worthy programmes catering either to minority interests or ethnicities.
It is a sad fact of life that among such minority-interest categories must be regarded those who take a genuine interest in current affairs, and in particular serious interview programmes.
Why this might be so would take a book or two to untangle, so let's just skip the detailed analysis and get straight to the guts of it.
It is a disgrace that Agenda - the one genuine political and current affairs analysis programme on mainstream free-to-air television - screens at 10am on a Sunday morning: an indication that our so-called quasi-public broadcaster treats with contempt the audience for the dissemination of serious political discussion, the analysis of national events, and the cross-examination of politicians on TV by experienced and able commentators.
Arguably, there are few more important functions of the media in its Fourth Estate imperative.
It is an even bigger disgrace that the programme has been axed by TVNZ with little in the way of a by-your-leave.
There are mutterings about possibly taking the programme or something similar in-house, or simply replacing it with a clone next year, but going on past record, you'd be taking your life in your hands if you held your breath.
It is one of the more conspicuous failings of the Labour-led administrations of the past nine years that so little progress was made on the crucially important issue of public interest TV in a rapidly changing environment.
They were right up with the play with New Zealand music - and that has taken off; they were very good on the expression of sovereignty in the international arena - maintaining the nuclear-free stance and refusing to join the "coalition of the willing" in Iraq; they took a step towards changing attitudes to violence against children with the removal of the parental prerogative defence in criminal assault cases; they had begun to develop some interventionist programmes to counteract the debilitating health effects of junk food eating habits.
But when it came to brain food in the form of charter-funded TV, all we got anywhere near prime time was the candy floss of reality TV.
Am I suggesting the hoi polloi be strapped down in their armchairs and made to watch educational or otherwise enlightening television? Absolutely not.
But when the taxpayer funds large chunks of its operation, surely there ought to be some choice beyond the constant diet of idols, models, celebrity survivors and imported forensic crime series screened at amenable hours.
Because just as welfare dependency and poor eating practices can become intergenerational, so, too, can viewing habits.
We've arrived at the stage now where it is probably impossible to place intelligent current affairs - programmes unafflicted by the tedious, voyeuristic repetitions of personal tragedies, traumas, scandals or afflictions but which address the issues of our times in arresting ways - on prime time because entire segments of the population simply no longer have the viewing "grammar" to engage.
How has it come to this? Well, as has been so-oft repeated, the public broadcasting model is essentially flawed.
TVNZ must serve two uncompromising masters: the competitive commercial one in which ratings - against which advertising is sold - is king; and the public interest model, the content of which fulfills some educative, instructive or cultural function.
The Public Broadcasting Charter was introduced to promote the latter, but its remit was evidently so wide and so loose that the majority of what we got was lowest-common-denominator rubbish - to which the supporters would no doubt say, "at least it was our rubbish".
And that, it seems, is the argument that prevailed.
Is it going to get any better under National? Probably not.
The ever-fragmenting multiplatform modern media has to try to sort out a way to pay for itself.
With TVNZ losing its exclusive access to charter funding and thus, essentially, its public broadcasting remit, the calls will come for it to be hocked off.
What money there is for public broadcasting will ultimately be spread so far and wide as to be practically invisible.
Those of us who are desperate for it will probably still find versions of it in the far reaches of the schedules, but public interest television as a coherent entity will cease to exist.
• Simon Cunliffe is assistant editor at the Otago Daily Times.
