The Edinburgh International Television Festival took place over the bank holiday weekend, with a host of debates, discussions and discourse occurring in the city. Here’s a round-up of some of the issues addressed:

Director-General of the BBC Mark Thompson gave this year’s MacTaggart lecture, the keynote speech of the festival, in which he delivered his defence of the corporation and proposed an introduction of retransmission fees payable by Sky to the commercial public service broadcasters. In what was a wide-ranging speech, Thompson spoke of the reputation of British television across the globe being “as strong as ever...if not stronger”. He highlighted the need for “change across the industry” to confront the decline in investment in original content. Thompson was dismissive of the suggested benefits of a cut to the licence fee, saying: “a pound out of the commissioning budget of the BBC is a pound out of [the] UK creative economy. Once gone, it will be gone forever."

Meanwhile, Jeremy Hunt gave his own views of the BBC at the festival, in the run-up to negotiations next year. He neither confirmed nor denied that cuts to the licence fee would become a reality, stating: “We haven't started any discussions on the licence fee yet. That is something that will start next year."

He did however express his opinion that the BBC had “mishandled” the executive pay issue, and that it needed a "much clearer understanding of its competitors". But Hunt also called the corporation, along with Sky, “incredibly important”, and responsible for the quality of content produced in the UK. Finally,

Hunt also addressed the issue of the current advertising regulations, and spoke of his belief that the mechanism which governs ITV's airtime sales deals with advertisers, the contract rights renewal system, was not “appropriate”.

Michael Grade was also interviewed, giving his views on the landscape for public service broadcasters. The former ITV chairman and chief executive stated that Channel 4 should compete for part of the licence fee, and that the BBC was “too big” and needed to “contract”.

This year’s Alternative MacTaggart lecture was delivered by Shameless writer Paul Abbott, in which he spoke out against the practice of piloting dramas, declaring they “never demonstrate the power of a series”, and called for the UK television industry to mirror the US’s commitment to large drama orders.

Other discussions taking place included a panel session focussing on reality television, and whether so-called “noisy characters” were ‘killing off’ serious documentaries. The panel included filmmaker Brian Woods, who opined it was increasingly difficult to have foreign stories commissioned, a view shared by former head of BBC documentaries Paul Hamann. Simon Dickson, deputy head of docs at Channel 4, disagreed with them, calling this a “golden age for documentaries”.

1st September 2010