Pedro Pina, YouTube’s chief in EMEA, will deliver this year’s Edinburgh TV Festival MacTaggart.

Pina will become the first person from an American tech giant to make the annual address, speaking to a room full of executives and commissioners who are still desperately working out how best to leverage the Google-owned behemoth.

For the past five years, Pina has led YouTube’s business, creator and content biz across EMEA, working with talent ranging from nascent digital creators to huge studios. Prior to YouTube, he spent a decade as a Global Client Partner for Google.

This year’s fest chair, Netflix docs commissoner Adam Hawkins, said Pina is “at the vanguard of the next wave of television.”

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

Pina said: “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. 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.”

It is perhaps unsurprising that the fest has opted for someone from YouTube this year. While YouTube chat used to occupy the fringes of the festival, last year’s YouTube panel was standing room only, while the Alternative MacTaggart was delivered by content creator Munya Chawawa, who lambasted the British TV industry for “ignoring evolution” as the “same outdated gatekeepers stick to the same outdated guns.”

Since then, some of the world’s most successful content creators have been on mainstream entertainment shows, the BBC has struck a landmark deal for YouTube-only content and Matt Brittin, a former colleague of Pina’s who used to run Google EMEA, has become the corporation’s Director General.

The Edinburgh TV Festival takes place from August 25 to 28. This could be its last year in the Scottish capital, with organizers currently deciding whether it should relocate to either Greater Manchester or Newcastle, or stay put.