By ANDREW YOUNG,
Entertainments Editor
IN an atmosphere of imminent change, New Television is to be the theme
of this year's Edinburgh International Television Festival.
It will kick off on August 25 with Rupert Murdoch giving the
MacTaggart Memorial Lecture on Freedom in Broadcasting, and will end
with Janet Street-Porter, the chair of this the fourteenth festival,
calling on key voices from the industry to describe the future of
television as they see it.
With deregulation, satellite, franchised optioning, and issues such as
Channel 4 and the new Channel 5, this is being seen as the most
important festival so far. Already it is a complete sell-out with more
than 900 delegates due to take part.
So great is the demand for tickets for the MacTaggart lecture -- the
only session open to the public -- that for the first time it is being
held in the McEwan Hall.
Giving details at a news conference in London yesterday Ms
Street-Porter said that, after delivering his prepared lecture, Mr
Murdoch would remain on stage for a question and answer session with
what is likely to be a near-2000 audience.
The following morning David Dimbleby will chair a session on the ''new
regulators'' with a panel that will include Lord Rees Mogg, chairman of
the Broadcasting Standards Council, and George Russell, chairman of the
IBA, soon to be the Independent Television Commission.
The proceedings will be spiced up with the next session --
Pornography, Erotica, and Percy Filth -- suggested by one of the
panelists, Sir Denis Forman, deputy chairman of the Granada Group. It
will deal with the fact that satellite technology has upped the stakes
in the sex-on-TV debate. Dr Germaine Greer is another panelist.
Another session will put the question: How can broadcasting freedoms
be protected in the context of censorship, secrecy, and violence? Yet
another session will ask if it is possible to put together drama
co-production packages without casting Jane Seymour as the heroine. The
penultimate session will deal with the reporting of the revolution in
China.
Asked about the statement by Mr Gus Macdonald, director of programmes,
Scottish Television, that the festival was moving to Glasgow, Ms
Street-Porter said: ''It was debated but was not agreed upon.
''Gus was a little premature. A feasibility study was done on venues
and we decided against it because the venues we wanted were too far
apart.''
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