Bbc not all laughs

I was surprised to read the article by Brian Ferguson last week quoting Shona Mccarthy and William Burdettcoutt’s concerns that the BBC’S coverage of the Fringe concentrates “almost exclusively on comedy”.

The BBC has more than 50 different programmes that are involved in bringing a huge selection of fantastic Edinburgh content to audiences across the UK as well as to international audiences. These include Radio 3’s In Tune, Late Junction, World on 3, The Verb, Jazz Lineup; Radio 4’s Opening Night, Loose Ends, Front Row, Saturday Review; Radio Scotland’s The Janice Forsyth Show; Radio 2’s The Michael Ball Show and the Arts Show; the Radio Wales Arts Show; the BBC World Service’s Global Beats and Arts Hour on Tour and TV highlights including BBC Two Scotland’s Kirsty Wark’s Edinburgh, BBC Breakfast on BBC One and Welcome to Edinburgh and Festival Tales on BBC Two.

I’d encourage people to watch and listen to these programmes live or on catch-up via the BBC iplayer to discover great discussion, reviews and performances from theatre, spoken word, music and cab- aret from the enormous range of amazing shows on offer at the Fringe.

We also proudly cover lots of comedy and comedic performances from brand new, up-and-coming and big name comedians. These are extremely popular with our audiences, many as part of well-known BBC programmes such as Just a Minute, the Asian Network Comedy Night, Fresh From the Fringe and Breaking the News. And I’m particularly delighted that for the second year we are holding the BBC New Comedy Award Semis and live Final in Edinburgh during August– a tribute to how important the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is to new comedy talent.

There is further BBC coverage from Edinburgh International Festival concerts and events at The Queen’s Hall, Usher Hall and The Studio; programmes from The Edinburgh International Book Festival at Charlotte Square and The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo at the Castle.

The BBC at the Edinburgh Festivals site at George Heriot’s School acts as a centrally located multimedia broadcast hub and base for many different BBC teams working in Edinburgh, whilst at the same time allowing us to offer additional audience engagement for all ages. Particularly popular are the activities for

children and families on offer from BBC Childrens and BBC Learning.

Trying to capture the range, breadth and sheer scale of the August Edinburgh Festivals will always be a challenge, but one that the BBC is excited and delighted to be part of as we aim to bring audiences to “The World’s Stage, every summer”.

EILEEN HERLIHY Head of entertainment and

events, BBC Scotland