Edinburgh TV Festival Moves Online

The Edinburgh TV Festival (ETF) will become a digital event as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The ETF, brought to you by YouTube and Freeview, is being designed to support and connect the television community in light of what has become a very challenging year. It will still deliver key, flagship moments such as The MacTaggart Lecture, controller sessions and awards, as well as the TV Foundation’s talent schemes, The Network, Ones to Watch and TV PhD. An ongoing program of digital sessions and content will launch in the coming weeks.

The next edition will see improved access and support by ensuring everything the festival does in 2020 is free for freelancers, who are being particularly affected by this crisis. It is also creating a stream of online content, to launch in the coming weeks, underpinned by the editorial rigour you’ve come to expect from the festival, led by Creative Director Stewart Clarke and Advisory Chair Patrick Holland.

Managing Director of the TV Festival and TV Foundation Campbell Glennie said: “We have decided that, in the best interests of everyone we would seek to bring together, educate and support, that we will not be staging the TV Festival physically in Edinburgh this August. However, our industry is based on creative innovation and so too is the Festival.

“For the past week we have been in consultation with our board, partners and supporters to re-examine not just what we could achieve this year, but more importantly what we should be doing to connect, discuss and find solutions to issues both perennial and particular to the evolving challenges we all face.

“I would like to thank our executive chair Graham Stuart, board, sponsors and advisory committee for their support, advice and guidance during the past few weeks, and look forward to working with them all to create new projects in 2020 that will respond to the challenges we’re all facing and bring us closer together.

“Television’s vital role in our lives has never been so present, valued and cherished, and so the team will be doing everything we can in 2020 to keep the discussion flowing, talent supported and diversity encouraged. It will not be the Festival we know, but it will still be the Festival we love.”

This year’s advisory chair, BBC Two Controller Patrick Holland, said: “I believe that Edinburgh’s role as a lightning rod for our industry is more important than ever this year.  The key themes we’ll be discussing; the future of the PSBs in the U.K. ecology, the role of TV in the climate emergency, reflecting the diversity of the audience in who makes and is featured in our shows – are brought into even sharper relief by the coronavirus crisis. I look forward to working with the team to bring that spirit to everyone between now and August.”

The festival’s executive chair, Graham Stuart, said: “An August without Edinburgh has always been unthinkable for the U.K. television industry. And it is with the greatest admiration for the resilience and imagination of the entire Edinburgh Television Festival team I can assure the industry that 2020 will be no different. Maybe just a little…”