Giddings Funds His Opposition

Isle Of Wight Festival promoter John Giddings is fed up of hearing fans praise the free event BBC Radio 1 is staging on London’s Hackney Marshes on the same June 22-24 weekend.

He says he finds it offensive because he’s helping to pay for the rival event.

Artists won’t get paid so well – if they get paid at all – to play the free bash on the 300 or so acres of grassland neighbouring the Olympic Park, and Giddings says it irks him when acts looking to play both expect him to work around the BBC’s schedule.

“What it amounts to is that I’m subsidising the competition,” he told Pollstar. “I understand that record companies want their acts to play a Radio 1 show but I’m not happy about paying for it.”

BBC, the national broadcasting station, is funded from license fees paid by everyone who owns a television set.
This also irks Giddings because it means part of the license fee he pays goes toward funding Radio 1.

On the assumption that Giddings has a colour television, he would pay the BBC an annual fee of £145 ($231).
The BBC bash (June 23-24) has Leona Lewis, Plan B, Ed Sheeran, Professor Green, and Jessie J.

One thing making Giddings happy is the ticket sales for his 65,000-capacity IOW, which has Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Pearl Jam, Elbow, and Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds.