NZ On Air's activities can be broken up into several areas:
Public broadcasting
NZOA funds New Zealand-focused radio, television, New Zealand music and digital media production for a range of public and private broadcasters and platforms. This includes drama, documentary, children's programmes, and programmes for special-interest groups. Programmes funded by NZOA often have an announcement about the commission's support for the programme. Initially the announcement was: "This programme was made with the help of your Broadcasting Fee – so you can see more of New Zealand on air". After the abolition of the Broadcasting Free, the announcement often said: "This programme was made with funding from New Zealand on Air". More commonly, at the end of a broadcast, a programme will say: "Thank you, New Zealand on Air, for helping us make." The agency funds Radio New Zealand, and the independently-owned Access Radio Network, Student Radio Network and Pacific Media Network.
Cultural promotion
NZ on Air focuses on "local content" – New Zealand programmes that are expensive or risky to make which the broadcaster market cannot fully pay for. These programmes are primarily drama, documentary, children's programmes and special-interest programmes.
Archiving
Funding for audiovisual archiving is now administered directly by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Centralising such archiving funding was a key recommendation of the seminal Horrocks review led by NZ on Air and published in 2009. In 2008 NZOA funded the establishment of NZ on Screen to enable easy online access for past New Zealand screen production. NZOA has since funded a similar NZ music history site Audio Culture, which launched in 2013.
Promotion of New Zealand music
Aimed at increasing the diversity of New Zealand music on diverse platforms including radio.
Broadcasting fee
NZOA was established under the Broadcasting Act 1989, initially funded by an annual 110 licence fee known as the Public Broadcasting Fee, paid by each household with a television set. A strong campaign developed in the late 1990s from a section of the public against the Broadcasting Fee. The reason behind the campaign was to prove "whether the broadcasting fee is a tax and the legality of applying GST to this tax". In the end the fee was scrapped in 1999, and the Commission has since been directly funded by the government. The fee was collected from those people who owned a television set although the fee was funding much more than television work, especially radio. Some campaigners believed this was unfair.
Music production
NZ on Air produces and distributes the Kiwi Hit Disc to showcase new funded music. NZOA provides "Making Tracks" funding for recording songs and their associated music videos. Funded music is chosen by a monthly, rotating panel of broadcast and music professionals.
Controversies and criticism
NZ on Air has attracted criticism over claims of misuse of its funds. In mid-2010 it spent $75,000 on two events celebrate 21 years of activity and between 2006 and 2011 it gave $80,000 in funding to help produce recordings and music videos for Annabel Fay, daughter of one of New Zealand's richest men, Sir Michael Fay. The Fay controversy contributed to the scrapping of the NZ on Air Album funding scheme in December 2010. NZ on Air was also criticised in 2012 for helping fund the production of The GC, a TV3documentary series about young Māori New Zealanders living on Australia's Gold Coast and for granting $30,000 to assist recording by Titanium, the winner of a radio competition to create a boy band. In early 2012, Labour MPs accused NZ on Air of a potential conflict of interest when NZ on Air board member and Prime Minister John Key's electorate chairman Stephen McElrea questioned the timing of the NZ on Air-funded documentary Inside Child Poverty, broadcast four days before the 2011 New Zealand general election. Two days after the broadcast, NZ on Air CEO Jane Wrightson had written to broadcaster TV3, expressing her disappointment with the show being broadcast days before the election. Complaints were laid with the Electoral Commission, which found the documentary did not come under its jurisdiction so it could not rule. The Broadcasting Standards Authority also received a complaint, but found the documentary did not break its rules on fairness, and law and order.
