I felt casual and creative at Edinburgh's TV festival

It was my 37th Edinburgh Festival. Every year I'm drawn back – I was a student here between 1965 and 1969 – and the city is quite astonishing during the Festival. I don't like to miss it, although I am now confined to the television weekend.

The Edinburgh Television Festival is always slightly odd in a year where there's also the Royal Television Society convention in Cambridge, which happens every two years. Edinburgh has been seen by the establishment as being the junior partner to Cambridge. At Cambridge, you hobnob with the people who run television, whereas Edinburgh is younger, more programme related, and much more about creative issues. Edinburgh is easier – it's more free-flowing and casual. I like it for that reason, because I came up through the creative side.

Last Friday, Granada decided to have its executive board strategy day in Edinburgh, so we gathered ourselves from our holidays and went to a beautiful house on the outskirts of the city, Prestonfields House, and spent six hours talking and walking around the lawns, without being interrupted by telephones.

Then we went on to the MacTaggart lecture, which I was very interested in, because it was being done by David Liddiment (ITV's director of channels), with whom I have worked in television nearly all my adult life. He is probably the most talented person I have ever worked with on the artistic side.

I was absolutely proud of him and what he said. It was very much from the heart, but based on common sense and factual analysis backed by his passion. He said that a bit of the soul had gone out of television, because we were being corseted by the need to achieve high ratings.

The concern is that the BBC is falling into the trap of me-too commercialism, and is not fulfilling its duty to create distinctive programming. I think there was a feeling in the hall that David's argument made sense.

Our BBC friends make lots of fantastic programmes, but BBC1 has lost its way. There's a tendency to imitate the schedule of ITV – moving the news to 10pm, taking the arts programmes to BBC2 and increasing the number of episodes of EastEnders. BBC1 is getting less interesting.

Late at night, I always end up going to the Assembly Rooms to get a bit of thespian engagement before going back to the George Hotel (the traditional drinking haunt of the television Festival). So on this occasion, I drank in the Assembly Rooms club bar with my daughter Claire, and then wentto the George to congratulate David.

On Saturday morning I met with the public affairs team of Granada to discuss what I should say at the session at which I had agreed to speak. I always do something – I think I owe it to the people at the Festival to engage in these conversations. The session that I had agreed to speak in was on digital television

Afterwards in the Assembly Rooms bar I bumped into the poet Carol Ann Duffy, whom I first met and commissioned 27 years ago, with Roger McGough. She explained to me that she is a vocational poet – she does it because she loves it, not because she's paid. I said that I was a vocational television person.

On Sunday morning I had to get up at the crack of dawn for the session, even though I hadn't got to bed till 3am. The first half was about whether the BBC should get its new channels. In general, I support the BBC on this issue and think it's good for British culture, but I don't think it should add the same channels as all the others.

There's a bit of double bluffing going on, where the BBC is talking about public service, but most of the money is going into the youth channel (the proposed BBC3) to take on E4 and into a couple of kids' channels that are going to help the BBC commercially through merchandising. Not enough of the money is going into BBC4, which is the proposed arts and education service.

The second part of the session involved talking about the rebranding of ITV Digital, which is going to be very successful, and ITV Sport, which we've had thousands of requests for. I think it's very important to have a British platform with emphasis on British programming in among the globally required programming that tends to be the mainstay of cable and satellite.

The Festival ended with a lecture by John de Mol (the founder of Endemol, which made Big Brother), which was really interesting. There's a British tendency to be pessimistic, but here was a Dutchman who has conquered the world. He was talking about how there are more outlets and more opportunities than there have ever been before.

The Edinburgh Festival is about renewed energy and renewed optimism. The big issue in my mind is whether the quality of British television will survive, to move from analogue into the digital age. I started the weekend worried about this, but I ended it uplifted. We have to take the opportunities on offer.

Steve Morrison is chief executive of Granada. He was talking to Louise Jury