This year’s Edinburgh TV Festival was one of the buzziest, a somewhat ironic fact given it’s also the last. From next year the TV festival, which first originated in the Scottish city fifty years ago, is moving to Manchester. The move was inevitably the talk of this year’s edition, with many genuinely emotional at the close of such a significant chapter.
But with the TV business under more pressure than ever, it wasn’t the main topic of conversation. Read on for Variety’s top takeaways from this year’s fest. There was no getting away from YouTube this year, not least because its EMEA boss Pedro Pina delivered this year’s keynote McTaggart lecture, in which he tried to persuade a suspicious if not outwardly hostile audience that the Silicon Valley platform is “not the villain.” But the video sharing giant came up in nearly every other panel, particularly those spotlighting the U.K.’s traditional public service broadcasters, who weren’t afraid to make their views known.
ITV entertainment boss Kevin Lygo scoffed at Pina’s £3 million pledge for U.K. content (“I did have a little chortle,” Lygo said. Unsurprisingly, the BBC’s new director-general Matt Brittin – Pina’s former boss at Google – was not as dismissive about his former employer, even suggesting the BBC could come up with its own local-news version to stay relevant. Love it or hate it, with its viewing figures fast overtaking traditional broadcasters’, YouTube is now undeniably a part of the U.K.’s broadcasting ecosystem.
With yet another contributor welfare scandal having hit British broadcasting this year in the form of Channel 4’s “Married at First Sight” U.K., duty of care continues to be front of mind. On the Channel 4 panel, director of content strategy Kiran Nataraja sidestepped questions about the scandal, citing two ongoing investigations, but her colleague Shaminder Nahal, head of specialist factual, was quizzed over another show, “Virgin Island.” “We review everything all the time,” Nahal said. The question, of course, is all the awareness around the topic enough to prevent another scandal in the future?
For the independent producers in the audience, many of whom had paid large sums to attend the festival, one of the key questions was who is still commissioning, particularly in this era of aggressive consolidation. The answers were an indictment of the state of the industry. The U.K.’s public service broadcasters are, by and large, in a sorry state.
Channel 4’s Kiran Nataraja, director of content strategy, said the network is “still open for business” but admitted that commissioning was “slower” at the moment as they wait to find a new director of programs, after incumbent Ian Katz leaves in October. At Paramount-owned Channel 5, Ben Frow said he was still commissioning but there were fewer opportunities for higher-end budgets. With its acquisition by Sky looming (the deal is currently going through the regulatory process), ITV entertainment boss Kevin Lygo was keen to reassure producers the network is continuing to function as normal, although with its £2.1 billion ITV Studios output deal, it’s questionable how much space there remains for indies.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
