Was wondering if anyone saw the recent coverage of the Edinburgh Film Festival on the BBC? Clearly an important event in the UK's cultural calender. No you probably didn't. There wasn't the time/resources/manpower apparently. The BBC however
did
have the resources to send over 400 personnel to the Glastonbury festival last weekend (the same as they sent to the Beijing Olympics last year).
BBC were the host broadcaster of Glastonbury, and weren't at the Olympics. Don't bother with the number comparison, it's pointless.
Also, coverage across multiple TV channels, red button, online, Radio 1/2/6music... for some reason, the amount of stuff and quality of it, no wonder it took a lot of people.
Why is the comparison pointless? Surely the expense involved is difficulty to justify. As large and important as the Glastonbury Festival is, the Edinburgh Film festival surely warranted
some
coverage.
1. Glastonbury has a vast array of broadcastable content, whereas Edinburgh would simply have been discussion and much less appealing.
2. Music content is appreciated by many more people than an 'art' based event.
3. The diversity of acts performing at Glastonbury (and it's ease of availability) provides many hours of entertainment during and after the event.
I'm not arguing Glastonbury shouldn't have been widely covered, far from it. As a relative youngster I certainly enjoy 'pop' music. Especially Iron Maiden, Opeth, Rush etc. Glastonbury's not my cuppa but yes it should be widely covered. But
nothing
from Edinburgh? Most people to some degree are interested in cinema, and it's not only 'arthouse' films.
Why is the comparison pointless? Surely the expense involved is difficulty to justify. As large and important as the Glastonbury Festival is, the Edinburgh Film festival surely warranted
some
coverage.
As has already been pointed out - the BBC is host broadcaster for the Glastonbury event - it isn't for the Edinburgh Festival.
As host broadcaster for Glastonbury the BBC has a duty to cover multiple-stages in high quality. The BBC was only host broadcaster for a couple of events at the Olympics (rowing, open-water kayaking and open-water swimming I think) - so the comparison you are making is between an event the BBC host broadcasts in its entireity (Glastonbury) and one which it mainly provided presentation facilities for (Olympics).
However whether the BBC gets a deal on Glastonbury (i.e. reduced rights costs for provision of production facilities) I don't know...
If you want to compare like-with-like - pull out all the coverage crew and staff from Glastonbury and just leave in the relatively small number of people who provided the BBC presentation facilities and production.
So you're just feeling bitter that Scotland was ignored?
Not bitter, just disappointed. It seems that raising this particular issue generally illicits an unsavoury response from some. To quote from another thread "Scots whingeing".