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So this year’s Media Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival was all about Google; Google and convergence. Eric Schmidt was the first non-broadcast industry speaker to deliver the MacTaggart lecture. But it wasn’t all boffins – there was a lot of luvving too!

I have been following the Athletics World Championships this week, as I am sure many of you have too. I hadn’t realised until I went to tune in for the first time that Channel 4 had snaffled this from the Beeb – and taken Michael Johnson with them.

ITV shares were up 3.3pc yesterday after The Telegraph revealed that it has been in talks with Silvio Berlusconi’s Mediaset – one of Endemol’s shareholders – about a potential takeover deal.

Rovi has signed a new partnership deal with Panasonic to power the TV manufacturer’s next generation EPG for connected TV and DVD/BD recorders in Europe.

Channel 4 has made its catch-up viewing figures for 4oD available for the first time, launching its first 4oD Monthly Report for July 2011.

IP Vision, a provider in the UK’s nascent hybrid DTT/IPTV over-the-top (OTT) TV sector, has announced that the FetchTV content portal will be available this autumn via an app as a service to consumers on Panasonic’s VIERA Connect compatible TV sets sold in the UK and Ireland.

Raymond Snoddy: Britain’s broadcasters may indeed be stuffed too full of arts graduates but Google may have too many engineers in power positions for its own good. Maybe Google should bring in some of those highly creative British “luvvies” to advise the “boffins”…

“Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused, and it is therefore become necessary to gain attention by magnificence of promises, and by eloquence sometimes sublime and sometimes pathetick.”

The Only Way is Essex (Towie) might not be to your taste but it has certainly proved a success for ITV2. It gets average ratings of more than a million viewers and generates a whole heap of social media activity – not to mention the endless branding opportunities… So is it time for it to move to ITV’s flagship channel? Apparently not.

After Eric Schmidt, the 36th Media Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival certainly gave the boffins a share of voice. On Saturday, Professor Brain Cox was interviewed by the luvvie and broadcaster Mariella Frostrup in what was billed ‘The Alternative MacTaggart’ lecture.