About 150 people turned out in support of the Save TVNZ7 campaign, which has held five other such meetings throughout New Zealand in recent weeks, and collected 28,000 signatures on a petition.
Those signatures were "sending a message to the Government ... that we do not want to kill off public broadcasting in this country", Ms Curran said.
The Government announced in April it would stop funding the Freeview commercial-free channel TVNZ7, which was set up with time-limited funding in 2006.
However, Ms Curran believed using the channel "for reruns" was "simply not good enough".
TVNZ7 cost $16 million to run, which was "modest" for a television channel, and attracted 1.4 million viewers each month.
"It's quirky, it's intelligent and it's Kiwi. I believe it's essential to our democracy. Once TVNZ7 goes, New Zealand will be the only other country in the OECD, bar Mexico, which does not have a public [television] broadcasting system."
Ms Curran had drafted a member's Bill to require TVNZ to fund TVNZ7 or something similar and asked those at the meeting to "not give up" on public broadcasting as the demise of TVNZ7 was just a "blip".
Others to speak at the meeting included Green Party broadcasting spokeswoman Julie Anne Genter, who called public broadcasting "essential" as it played "an important role in education", and University of Otago media film and communication senior lecturer Erika Pearson, who said TVNZ7 was "not just a station, it is a voice".
