As Freeview counts down to the launch of its first additional channel, TVNZ 6, on September 30, a visiting British expert has struck a contrarian note by calling for major public broadcasters to embrace pay-to-view models.

Speaking to a rare assembly of local media chiefs at a conference on the future of broadcasting in Wellington, Digital UK chairman Barry Cox said the continuing decline in advertising revenue among public broadcasters in the developed world required a sharp change in tack.

He said viewers would have to get used to the idea of paying for certain types of programming - the comparatively high-risk drama genre, for example - or they would simply stop being made due to budgetary restrictions

In New Zealand and elsewhere, public broadcasting is being squeezed by the rise of subscription-based television services such as Sky TV and new digital formats and devices, such as DVDs, games and the internet.

Mr Cox said attempts by governments to provide wide-ranging and free content was often counter-productive because they overlapped and distorted those content producers who could create commercially viable programming.

He believes it is "inevitable" in the UK that the BBC will need to switch to introducing subscriptions for its premium content.

"Around the developed world we are now well in to a long transition from the highly regulated, publicly financed environment that flourished more than 20 years ago to a more conventional marketplace with all the advantages and problems that brings," Mr Cox said.

Here in New Zealand, the Labour-led government remains committed to providing free-to-air public broadcasting.

During the conference at which Mr Cox spoke, delegates were provided with a recent survey commissioned by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, which reported that an overwhelming 89% of New Zealanders believe that public broadcasting "contributes to overall social, cultural, democratic and social value."

Initially, the cost of running Freeview will largely be borne by TVNZ, with no advertising permitted for the first five years, aside from programme sponsorship.

TVNZ was given $79 million of extra government funding to help cover the costs of the new channels.

Freeview general manager Steve Browning argued that a digital platform for free channels is a necessary counterweight to the Sky Network.

He said that as Sky increased its subscription base, it would increasingly be able to "hoover up" all the premium television content, something he described as an "unhealthy" development for local media.

Providing free content in digital format was an important part of ensuring that New Zealand retained competitive local broadcasting, he said.

He also argued that it was important to accommodate the emergence of high definition television.

"The television is evolving. If you walk into a consumer electronics shop now - other than The Warehouse - you'll struggle to find a conventional CRT [cathode ray tube] television. And from next year, major manufacturers won't produce them at all. It'll all be flatscreens - LCD and plasma - and mostly it'll be 32 inches and above."

TVNZ chief executive Rick Ellis pointed out that the cost of maintaining existing analogue technology was escalating, and that switching to Freeview would allow funds to be redeployed to new programming.

So far, some 41,000 Freeview decoders have been sold in New Zealand, with a skew towards rural viewers.

Although physically housed within TVNZ, Freeview acts as an umbrella organisation for a number of competing broadcasters, including TVNZ, MediaWorks (the operator of TV3 and C4), Maori Television and Triangle.

Aside from TVNZ 6, which will feature a mixture of kids', family and adult programming, a number of other channels are due to come online through Freeview in the near future.

News and sports channel TVNZ 7 is scheduled for launch on March 30, 2008. And community television broadcaster Triangle has set early October as the date for the launch of its Stratos channel.

MediaWorks and Maori Television have not set dates for new channels yet but both are said to be putting offerings together.