Edinburgh International Television Festival

Founded in 1976 and now in its 30th year the Festival is held annually over the August bank holiday weekend at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre.

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Featuring prominent television industry voices and sessions covering pertinent issues facing the future of broadcasting, the Festival is best known for its keynote address; the James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture. This features prescient speeches from controversial and powerful media figures that reads like a who's who of British TV over the last 3 decades. In recent years this has included Greg Dyke, John Birt, Mark Thompson, Tony Ball, John Humphreys and in 1989; Rupert Murdoch. Probably the most well known speech was by an ill Dennis Potter in 1993 when he attacked the chairman and director general of the BBC by saying; "you cannot make a pair of croak-voiced Daleks appear benevolent even if you dress one of them in an Armani suit and call the other Marmaduke."

Related Topics:
Greg Dyke - John Birt - Mark Thompson - Tony Ball - John Humphreys - 1989 - Rupert Murdoch - Dennis Potter - 1993 - Daleks

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John Birt returned to give the Lecture in 2005.

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