Niall Flanagan, the former acting deputy editor of ITV’s Lorraine, has been appointed head of editorial at the Edinburgh TV Festival.
The new role has arisen due to the restructuring of the previous creative director role, which had been held by Rowan Woods for the last two years, into two new positions: Head of editorial and editorial manager. Both roles are fixed-term contracts for this year’s festival.
Flanagan has worked on some of the UK’s biggest shows within ITV Daytime, produced more than 1,000 hours of live TV, and worked on major national and international events such as the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the Coronavirus pandemic and Brexit.
With more than 20 years’ experience, Flanagan is no stranger to the festival. He was part of the Changemakers programme in 2024, at which point he was a senior producer on Lorraine whom the festival described as “a creative broadcast journalist with almost twenty years of experience working on some of the UK’s biggest and most trusted shows with ITV Daytime.” Two decades previously, he was part of the TVYP programme, which later became The Network.
Flanagan will work with this year’s advisory chair Adam Hawkins to shape the creative direction of the festival and pull the overall programme together.
“As the evolution of our industry continues apace, with viewing habits ever-changing and diversifying, the TV Festival’s role in celebrating, challenging and inspiring our industry has never been more important,” said Flanagan.
“As a proud alumnus of the TV Foundation, it’s thrilling to find myself returning to the Festival as head of editorial to lead the execution of this year’s programme.”
TV Foundation and TV Festival chief executive Campbell Glennie added: “Reshaping the programming function into a team structure will give us a more diverse range of expertise and viewpoints.
“I’m delighted Niall is joining us as the lead of this new approach: he is a proven editorial powerhouse and the fact that he has such close links to the TV Foundation, from the very start of his career, feels like a serendipitous moment.”
The Festival is currently seeking applications for the accompanying editorial manager position.
Image: Edinburgh TV Festival
