Media: Spotlight - Reality TV, cheques and five feature at Edinburgh.

The quality of programmes was high on the TV festival's agenda.

The 2004 Media Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival was a different beast from previous years: a point noted by the Sky Networks managing director, Dawn Airey, in her introduction to the James McTaggart Memorial Lecture.

The lecture was given this year by the BBC journalist and Radio 4 Today programme presenter John Humphrys. Out went the parade of suits and senior management with their agenda of politicking, agenda-setting and backbiting; in came a renewed focus on craft, creativity and the canker at the heart of the British television product.

This was a subject Humphrys took up with passion. His withering attack on the morals and mores of the modern British TV industry pulled few punches.

And while he conceded the best TV of today is probably better than the best TV of the past, he noted: 'The bad television of today is worse. It is not only bad - it is damaging, meretricious, seedy and cynical.'

Much of Humphrys' ire was aimed at 'so-called reality television', responsible, he said, for turning 'human beings into freaks for us to gawp at'. Big Brother 5 was singled out for special attention.

Many questioned the wisdom of allowing a radio broadcaster who freely admits he hasn't owned a TV for the past five years to give such a speech.