By Nick Higham BBC media correspondent

Greg Dyke has put together this year's festival

This really is an occasion to listen to the industry's heavy hitters. The chairman of the planning committee for this year's event is Greg Dyke, no less, and the speakers he has lured to Cambridge are equally substantial figures.

Where else would you find the chief executive of BSkyB, Tony Ball, and the chairmen of Carlton and Granada, Michael Green and Charles Allen, on a single platform alongside Dyke?

Where else could you hear all four of Channel 4's chief executives, Sir Jeremy Isaacs, Michael Grade, Michael Jackson and Mark Thompson, together debating the channel's future in a multichannel world?

And where else would you get the bosses of two of the biggest global media companies, Viacom (owner of MTV, CBS and Paramount) and RTL (the majority shareholder in Five), alongside absurdly rich German TV mogul Haim Saban (who made his fortune out of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and is rumoured to be interested in ITV), together discussing the future of their industry and whether they want to grow further in Britain?

The answer to the last bit is presumably "yes", if they've bothered to turn up in Cambridge.

Channel 4's Mark Thompson will meet his predecessor

It's a remarkable testimony to the worldwide reputation of Cambridge that these big cheeses are prepared to travel there. Two years ago the grandest fromage of all, Rupert Murdoch, was due to speak until 11 September closed America's airspace and he was trapped on the wrong side of the Atlantic.

In one respect the timing of this year's event is unfortunate as well. The organisers must have hoped that Carlton and Granada would have heard by now if their proposed merger is to be given the go-ahead.

The question of whether a single ITV company is about to emerge is pretty crucial to any discussion of television's immediate future in Britain, if not necessarily to the crystal ball-gazing about where television will be in 2010 which is scheduled for Friday morning.

As it is the trade secretary Patricia Hewitt, who will have spent the preceding weekend in Mexico, trying to rescue something from the shambles of the World Trade Organisation talks in Cancun, has give herself an extra ten days in which to consider the Competition Commission's recommendations on the Carlton-Granada merger.

Her decision is not now expected until early October.

So delegates will just have to make do with the culture secretary Tessa Jowell, no doubt hoping to do rather better than at the 2001 convention, when she stumbled through an embarrassing question and answer session, giving every appearance of not being on top of her brief.