Pedro Pina to address this year’s Edinburgh TV Festival

The annual James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival will be delivered by the vice president of YouTube EMEA, Pedro Pina.  

Pina oversees YouTube’s business, creator and content ecosystem across Europe, Middle East and Africa. In this role, he leads the platform’s relationships with all of its content providers, from nascent digital creators to the world’s largest broadcasters.  

He also spent over a decade at YouTube parent company Google as a Global Client Partner as well as holding leadership roles at McCann Worldgroup, France Telecom, Yum, PepsiCo and P&G.  

Pina is a celebrated champion for inclusion, with his advocacy earning him global recognition including being named the world’s top LGBTQ+ executive role model on the OUTstanding 100 Global list.  

The MacTaggart lecture, now in its 51st year, explores key issues facing the TV industry. Recent MacTaggart speakers include James Harding, James Graham, Louis Theroux and Emily Maitlis.  

“To be invited to give the MacTaggart lecture is an incredible honour, particularly at a moment when our industry has such a profound opportunity to redefine itself,” said Pina. “Television has always been celebrated by its ability to connect us, and today, we are living in the most diverse and flourishing creative era in human history. 

“The viewers haven’t vanished – they are more engaged than ever, they’re simply ready for us to meet them on their own terms. By bridging the unique storytelling of premium broadcasting with the democratic, expansive power of platforms like YouTube, we can unlock an extraordinary new chapter. I look forward to welcoming leaders to Edinburgh to embrace this future with optimism, and to building TV’s next golden age, together.” 

The festival’s advisory chair Adam Hawkins added that Pina is “at the vanguard of the next wave of television”.  

He added: “I think Pedro’s MacTaggart will be provocative, inspiring and a much-needed reset in how we think about the industry we all love.”