Elisabeth Murdoch to give MacTaggart Lecture 2012.

London, Monday 30^th January, 2012: Elisabeth Murdoch, Chairman and CEO of Shine Group, will give this year’s MacTaggart Lecture at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival, it was confirmed today.

Now in its 37^th year, for the first time the Festival will take place from Thursday to Saturday, with dates confirmed as 23^rd to 25^th August 2012.

The sessions lineup will include a masterclass on one of this year’s most talked about series, BBC One drama Sherlock, with appearances from show creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gattis and producer Sue Vertue. Further sessions will be announced in due course.

The prestigious MacTaggart Lecture always attracts major names from both UK and international broadcasting, and is known for producing controversial and agenda-setting speeches. Past MacTaggart speakers include Eric Schmidt, Mark Thompson, James Murdoch, Dennis Potter, Michael Grade, Verity Lambert, Ted Turner, Greg Dyke, David Liddiment, Peter Fincham, Charles Allen, Jeremy Paxman, John Mortimer and Rupert Murdoch.

Elisabeth Murdoch comments: “To be invited to deliver the MacTaggart lecture is a great honour and one I am delighted to accept. At such an incredibly exciting time for our ever changing industry it is a privilege to be entrusted with its most prestigious platform to address some of the countless challenges, extraordinary opportunities and profound questions that we collectively face. I am very much looking forward to it.”   

Advisory Chair of the Festival, Kenton Allen, comments: “Elisabeth is one of the foremost creative leaders in our business and she promises to give us a fascinating insight into what the future may hold for content creators. She is the first woman to give the MacTaggart in 16 years and the third member of the Murdoch family to give the speech. Both these facts, will I’m sure, give us a highly memorable launch pad for the 2012 festival. Together with a much more user friendly Thursday – Saturday schedule and the team behind Sherlock spilling the beans behind the drama of the year it’s already shaping up to be a very special event.”

Executive Chair of the Festival, Elaine Bedell, comments: “I’m very pleased in my second year as Executive Chair to be able to announce the first female MacTaggart lecturer for 16 years – and for it to be Elisabeth Murdoch, who is indisputably a major figure and a leading creative leader in the television community.   Liz has been both a broadcaster and a producer, has a major footprint in the States and across Europe, as well as the UK, and is uniquely placed to offer a broad,  insightful, and thoroughly well-connected appraisal of the many changes facing the media industry.”

Since founding Shine in 2001, Elisabeth Murdoch has steered its growth from a single multi-genre independent to an internationally renowned content group responsible some of the most respected and prolific production companies in the worlds of scripted and non-scripted television. Shine Group companies now number 27 across Europe, the USA and Australasia, and are responsible for some of the world’s best loved and travelled television programmes as well as encompassing international distribution, film production, social gaming and online broadcasting.

Elisabeth began her career in television at the Nine Network in Australia as a researcher in 1990, later joining Fox Television in Los Angeles as Programme and Promotion Manager for seven stations. She then went to the FX Cable Network as Director of Acquisitions. In 1995, she started her own company, EP Communications, managing two dominant NBC affiliate television stations KSBW-TV and KSB-TV. The stations won one national and five Californian Emmy Awards as well as the 1995 Peabody Award for Broadcast Excellence. Prior to setting up Shine, Elisabeth joined British Sky Broadcasting as General Manager before rising to Managing Director, Sky Networks with overall responsibility for Sky’s programming business, group consumer marketing and its news, film and entertainment channels. In 2008 Elisabeth was appointed a Tate Trustee and a Director of the UK Film Council.

Visit www.mgeitf.co.uk to register now. Follow the Festival at on @edinburghtvfest