Glastonbury coverage on the BBC

What parts of the Edinburgh Festival would you cover? How many people would you send to cover it? Please bear in mind the number of people it takes to cover each venue, the time it takes to change venues, and where would you broadcast this?

How many people would watch? More or less than Glasto?

On a separate note, the Daily Mail got their teeth into this story, and are allowing Mr PERMENANTLY OUTRAGED & co to vent their spleens in the comments section...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196021/What-Mr-Marr-400-BBC-colleagues-Glastonbury-Gaga.html

Bear in mind he's talking about the Edinburgh Film Festival, not the Edinburgh festival which is something very different.

The thing is that neither festival can be carried by any broadcaster that well as they wouldn't be able to show any of the events. The film companies wouldn't want them showing the films and the acts at the Edinburgh Festival wouldn't want to spoil ticket sales by putting their acts on TV.

The Edinburgh *Festival* coverage over the years has never been that good... just a load of people talking about shows which none of us can watch because either all the tickets are sold out or it's a long way away and there's no hotel rooms left!

[/quote]The Edinburgh *Festival* coverage over the years has never been that good... just a load of people talking about shows which none of us can watch because either all the tickets are sold out or it's a long way away and there's no hotel rooms left![/quote]

You're quite correct the coverage has never been very good, either for the Festival, Fringe or the Film Festival. Which is very frustrating for people north of the border. I was of course specifically referring to the Film Festival as the Festival and Fringe aren't till next month. As i said they couldn't spare a single body to cover it nationally. You say "it's a long way away" ? From who?

scuse my crappy quoting by the way.

Its easy to get wrong until you're used to it.

Start the quote with {quote} and end it with a {/quote} (with square brackets) - as in "quote", then "end quote".

Well I would dispute that, Inspector. Television programmes around the festivals in Edinburgh may have been pish before, but there's no reason they have to be.

Many of the big shows launched here in August will end up in London - they tend to be the ones which garner the most publicity anyway, and there's now a trillion comedians that will launch a new show here and take it across the UK. Massive scope for a daily round up with interviews of said comics - which is absolutely no different to having the same comedians on Johnathan Ross. You get an entertaining interview, they get to plug their show, and 99.5% of the population don't actually go and see the show - whether its in the West End of London or Scotland.

And with well over 1 million tickets sold for Fringe shows in one month, I would say that knocks the West End into a cocked hat, thank you very much.

STV did the 5.30 show from Edinburgh last year using that format and it was very enjoyable. I expect they'll make even more of it with The Hour.

It seems crazy to me for network not to avail themselves of cheap big-name interviews and features.

EDIT: To clarify, August in Edinburgh sees the Festival (proper) - an artsy affair with operas and ballets, the Fringe - with the smaller stage shows, new productions with big names, comedians and other arts, the Television Festival - a talking shop, the Film Festival (or at least it used to before it was shifted back), the Jazz Festival with musos from around the world.

You don't need to cover the venues, unless you want to take an ENG crew out to gather pictures - you could have your own little outdoor studio setup (as STV do) and invite the celebs along to push their shows and give interviews.

Hardly reinventing the wheel, gentlemen.

Apparently we're too far away though. An unfortunate opinion of many (especially) in the BBC south of the border. I went down to Wembley last week for AC/DC, piece of piss. I'm down there for various things several times a year (especially gigs). It's hardly a hassle, and it's hardly that far. Although you wouldn't believe that from the BBC's weather map depicting a small distant land at the top of the map.

Got it, finally. If it had been explained somewhere in Disney format, I might have got it.

Cheers for that.

I'm a bit of a whinging Scot, I confess. That said I was born in Holland, so I'm not sure if the label is strictly correct.

It *is* frustrating to hear a legitimate question like, "why is the Edinburgh {insert genre} Festival not being covered", only to get red herring answers like, "not a host broadcaster", "Anglia has 8% of the population too", "you're too far away and we'd need subtitles" etc etc being spouted forth.

That's the problem with doing like-for-like comparisons, of course.

In my humble opinion, I don't think we should be doing any sort of comparison. The Edinburgh arts festivals are unique in the world, in terms of scope and variety and attendance.

Why the heck should that be put into the same category as vegetable fairs in Norwich? Good grief.

And Scotland IS too small on the stupid tilted weather map - but if Tom Schaf is presenting then I don't actually look at the map.

There. I said it.

To be fair, the host broadcaster discussion came from the amount of people who were sent to Glasto compared to Olympics - there's been a few things running through the thread. Other answers, not gonna dispute the red herringness of them.

Well Channel 4 and the BBC have both tried (and C4 used to do a lot more coverage than the BBC have ever done) and they've never really found a format that works well enough to be used again the next year.

I've a keen interest in comedy, but I've never really been engaged by the Edinburgh coverage, I'd love to go but watching it on the TV just doesn't cut it. To me it only warrants a Newsnight Review or Culture Show special... and the same for other similar events

I must admit I don't get the fuss about the weather map. Even if you could see the country, you still wouldn't know the weather given those stupid graphics