Brit Beat: BBC Gears Up for Biggest Glastonbury Broadcast Yet

variety.com:

Mark Sutherland It’s the most wonderful time of the year for U.K. festival-goers: Glastonbury Festival returns this weekend.

Most of the 200,000-strong crowd – including a large chunk of the U.K. music industry – are already on site at Worthy Farm but, for those unable to get a ticket, the BBC is promising more coverage than ever.

The corporation scored record viewing figures for Glastonbury 2023, with Sir Elton John pulling in 7.6 million viewers for his Sunday night farewell performance.

But the BBC’s head of popular music TV, Jonathan Rothery, says he doesn’t feel any pressure to beat those stats. “Record figures are always good but as long as we’re entertaining people, it’s good,” Rothery tells Variety. “Glastonbury coverage ain’t broke so we don’t need to fix it, and whatever we add needs to be to the benefit of the viewer.