The World’s Largest Arts Festival – The Edinburgh Fringe
Every August, Scotland is home to a genuinely world-leading celebration of arts and culture – The Edinburgh International Festival, and much bigger, Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Surpassed only by the Olympics and the football World Cup in global ticketed event size, it is an open-access (“unjuried” or uncurated) performing arts festival, meaning there is no selection committee, and anyone may participate, with any type of performance. The official Fringe Programme categorises shows into sections for theatre, comedy, dance, physical theatre, circus, cabaret, children’s shows, musicals, opera, music, spoken word, exhibitions, and events. Comedy is the largest section, making up over one-third of the programme, and the one that in modern times has the highest public profile, due in part to the Edinburgh Comedy Awards.
The festival has been growing strongly since the first EIF in 1947. The 2015 Fringe issued an estimated 2,3 million tickets for 50,459 performances of 3,314 shows in 313 venues over 25 days; the 2016 Fringe issued an estimated 2,5 million tickets for 50,266 performances of 3,269 shows; and the 2017 Fringe 2,7 million tickets for 53,232 performances of 3,398 shows. In 2019 the Fringe broke 3 million ticket sales for the first time. The festival has since faced the considerable challenge of the pandemic and Brexit (UK VISA issuing problems are said to be badly affecting the festival) but sales in 2022, its first year back, were a robust 2.3 million. (Wikipedia)
Despite its size and diversity and its importance in helping to establish the careers of a great many top writers and performers (particularly UK writers and performers) the festival itself receives precious little UK media attention (The BBC puts more time and resources into other festivals like the Glastonbury music festival weekend). There is something that is all too familiar about the lack of coverage for artistic and cultural events in Scotland.
Maybe its because…
The Country That Invented TV Doesn’t Control Its Own Broadcasting
Commercial UK TV is almost entirely London based with the exception of the regional segments of ITV (like STV based in Glasgow & ITV Border which serves the South of Scotland but is based in Carlisle in England) for local news and a small amount of local programming. Scottish commercial productions make up a tiny fraction of what would be a Scottish population share – its advertising revenue share. ITV even broadcasts England football internationals (which the Scottish regions are unable to opt out of) while Scotland games are on pay tv.
STV Productions & staffing: OFCOM report submission. STV Studios production company based in Glasgow and London – ’51-200′ employees.
ITV Border Scottish productions & Staffing: OFCOM report on Scottish media.
The BBC, the very dominant public broadcaster, likewise, receives hundreds of millions of pounds subsidy every year in the form of the shortfall between its spending in Scotland and Scottish TV licence fee payers contribution and, despite heavy criticism and promises to do better, is still failing to meet agreed targets for Scottish content. This has led to a practice known as ‘lift and shift‘
BBC Scotland Productions & Staffing: Holyrood report BBC submission.
‘Media Nations – Scotland’ Ofcom Report
International comparison: Ireland/Scotland
In 2023, the broadcasting spending in Scotland and Ireland differed significantly. According to the Ofcom Media Nations Scotland 2023 report, BBC Scotland’s spend for Scotland was £64.6 million, while RTE in Ireland spent approximately £286 million on providing full TV, radio, and online services. Additionally, the Scottish Affairs Committee reported that the spend by STV/ITV on first-run content for Scotland was a meagre £9.4 million. These figures highlight a substantial disparity in broadcasting spending between the two countries.
Limiting & controlling Scottish News programming
Even the modest change of airing a Scottish News at 9pm to reflect the post 1999 devolved reality took the BBC decades to reluctantly allow (though not on flagship BBC1 and coming in the aftermath of the independence referendum coverage criticism). Indeed, as the 1997 Labour government were deciding what to devolve to Edinburgh & what to reserve in London, the BBC’s Director General John Birt ‘wrote to, & then went to see, the new Prime Minister Tony Blair’.
“I expounded not just from the BBC’s perspective but from the nation’s. I argued that we were one of the few institutions which bound Britain together. BBC News was iconic” – John Birt
Blair agreed (“Okay, let’s fight”) and – going against BBC Scotland and the Broadcasting Council – they ensured London would retain total control over broadcasting.
With that lack of control, Scotland gets a particularly bad deal from the BBC. A recent study showed licence fee spend in Scotland was only 55 per cent compared to 74 per cent in Northern Ireland, 95 per cent in Wales and more than 100 per cent in England (in 2016 MacKinnon said she wanted to see more of the money raised from the licence fee in Scotland being spent here)
“There is a significant number still in Scotland whose trust we lost, and I think there’s still a bit of work to be done in that regard. I think it’s part of my mission to try and address these perceptions which may have led to that loss of trust,” – Donalda MacKinnon (the first post indyref director of BBC Scotland)
The National
Despite London’s determination to retain powers over broadcasting in Scotland, Scottish government attempts to have the BBC spend more of its budget in Scotland have been ongoing and have led to the creation of the ‘BBC Scotland’ channel.
