I went to Edinburgh on Friday and Saturday to soak up the last the fringe festival had to offer. I managed to blag my way in to the Edinburgh Television Festival, a five hundred quid per head affair. A friend of mine, Claire, was going so I sneaked in to hear some of the lectures and plenaries. I even asked a question regarding my pet interest of micro audiences during the plenary on Who will win the web? The panel for this plenary included TV execs from ITV and Channel 4 and reps from Reuters, the Telegraph and the my favourite daily tome, The Guardian.
I asked them if in the future, a parishioner from a Pentecostal church might download their church's news from the web, where they would receive ten minutes of Reuters news followed by ten minutes of Jesus news. A different person might download the same ten minutes of Reuters followed by ten minutes of union news if they were downloading from the Transport and General Workers Union Website. I asked what impact this would have on traditional forms of news and whether it would be a source of income for news outlets, given traditional methods such as newspapers' revenue was falling.
I couldn't believe my luck at sneaking in to this amazing conference. During morning tea, I scored a lanyard so I thought I didn't have to sneak around anymore. But, an observant usher noticed I was sans name tag and refused me entry into my next plenary, a role play involving news desk editors from the Guardian, the BBC, Sky News and Al Jazeera and a "real time" kidnapping on British soil of a highly decorated Iraq War vet. I was shown the door, but luckily it was via the wheel chair entrance, so I sneaked back in and befriended Conservative MP John Whittingdale, the head of the House of Commons Select Committee on Communications. We had an interesting chat - he used to be Margaret Thatcher's press secretary and was there the day she was dumped by her Party. We watched Terror Tapes - Broadcast or Be Damned together and concluded that we would both seek the resignation of the Sky News editor for showing the live footage of the hostage takers being raided, which resulted in the death of the hostage. Click here to see more.
And then of course, I ate my free lunch, which included fruit kebabs, mushroom tapenade on spinach flat bread and boccini cheese with tomato and basil. And a free t-shirt for both me and Jock and some fair trade chocolate. I didn't eat the t-shirt in case you were wondering...
To show you that the state of television in the UK is all the better for this conference, where the greatest minds in this TV nation get together over a weekend, here are two clips which appeared on telly last week....
I asked them if in the future, a parishioner from a Pentecostal church might download their church's news from the web, where they would receive ten minutes of Reuters news followed by ten minutes of Jesus news. A different person might download the same ten minutes of Reuters followed by ten minutes of union news if they were downloading from the Transport and General Workers Union Website. I asked what impact this would have on traditional forms of news and whether it would be a source of income for news outlets, given traditional methods such as newspapers' revenue was falling.
I couldn't believe my luck at sneaking in to this amazing conference. During morning tea, I scored a lanyard so I thought I didn't have to sneak around anymore. But, an observant usher noticed I was sans name tag and refused me entry into my next plenary, a role play involving news desk editors from the Guardian, the BBC, Sky News and Al Jazeera and a "real time" kidnapping on British soil of a highly decorated Iraq War vet. I was shown the door, but luckily it was via the wheel chair entrance, so I sneaked back in and befriended Conservative MP John Whittingdale, the head of the House of Commons Select Committee on Communications. We had an interesting chat - he used to be Margaret Thatcher's press secretary and was there the day she was dumped by her Party. We watched Terror Tapes - Broadcast or Be Damned together and concluded that we would both seek the resignation of the Sky News editor for showing the live footage of the hostage takers being raided, which resulted in the death of the hostage. Click here to see more.
And then of course, I ate my free lunch, which included fruit kebabs, mushroom tapenade on spinach flat bread and boccini cheese with tomato and basil. And a free t-shirt for both me and Jock and some fair trade chocolate. I didn't eat the t-shirt in case you were wondering...
To show you that the state of television in the UK is all the better for this conference, where the greatest minds in this TV nation get together over a weekend, here are two clips which appeared on telly last week....
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