In 2021, BAFTA Award winning Dramatist and Playwright Jack Thorne delivered the MacTaggart lecture in the Festival’s second digital edition. Thorne utilised his address to speak out on the UK TV industry's appalling treatment of disabled on screen and off screen talent. Thorne delivered an impassioned cry for the Industry to do better in terms of accessibility and to accelerate change.  The Edinburgh TV Festival brought to you by Screen Scotland, is the UK’s foremost television event, bringing together leading industry figures and a broad, diverse range of delegates to celebrate and dissect the world of global television production. #EdTVFest For more information, go to: www.thetvfestival.com

In 2020, historian and broadcaster David Olusoga was tasked with delivering the MacTaggart lecture in the Festival’s first ever digital edition amid a global pandemic and shortly after the Black Lives Matter movement. Olusoga used his address to decry a lost generation of diverse TV Talent who had given up on a industry stacked against them. Olusoga campaigned for real structural change within the TV industry and drew from his own personal experiences to expose the prevalence of Racism in the UK TV industry to this day. The Edinburgh TV Festival brought to you by Screen Scotland, is the UK’s foremost television event, bringing together leading industry figures and a broad, diverse range of delegates to celebrate and dissect the world of global television production. #EdTVFest For more information, go to: www.thetvfestival.com

On the lead up to our 2022 Festival, Edinburgh TV Festival are releasing a series of our esteemed MacTaggart lectures in a podcast format. In 2019 the agenda-setting lecture was delivered by Dorothy Byrne, former head of news and current affairs at Channel 4 and current President of Murray Edwards College, Cambridge.  In her equally hilarious and insightful address, Byrne lamented on the difficulties of starting a career in a male dominated industry. She challenged documentarians and journalists to make bold, disruptive programming and called out lying politicians. The Edinburgh TV Festival brought to you by Screen Scotland, is the UK’s foremost television event, bringing together leading industry figures and a broad, diverse range of delegates to celebrate and dissect the world of global television production. #EdTVFest For more information, go to: www.thetvfestival.com

On the lead up to our 2022 Festival, Edinburgh TV Festival are releasing a series of our esteemed MacTaggart lectures in a podcast format. In 2015, the lecture was delivered by writer and producer Armando Iannucci. In his address, Iannucci praised the creativity of the British TV Industry and spoke of his worries of channel privitisation and scrapped license fees- concerns that 7 years on, are more relevant than ever. - The Edinburgh TV Festival brought to you by Screen Scotland, is the UK’s foremost television event, bringing together leading industry figures and a broad, diverse range of delegates to celebrate and dissect the world of global television production. #EdTVFest For more information, go to: www.thetvfestival.com