Leave it to Kevin Spacey, the first actor in the Edinburgh International Television Festival's 37 year history to deliver the keynote James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture, to outline everything that's wrong with the mindset of today's TV execs.

The House of Cards star had plenty of ammunition to demonstrate definitively that the anti-tech approach will eventually result in the old guard's demise, unless viewers are allowed to determine the means of consumption.

"If you are watching a film on your television, is it no longer a film because you're not watching it in the theater?" Spacey asked his audience. "If you watch a TV show on your iPad is it no longer a TV show? The device and length are irrelevant."

Labels are useless, the actor told the suits, "except perhaps to agents and managers and lawyers who use these labels to conduct business deals."

For the kids watching the shows, however, "there's no difference watching Avatar on an iPad or watching YouTube on a TV and watching Game of Thrones on their computer. It's all content. It's all story."

Execs and their studios must learn to adapt and accommodate and appreciate the wonderful opportunity that is being given to them to do so.

"[Y]ou have this incredible confluence of a medium coming into its own just as the technology for that medium is drastically shifting," Spacey said. "Studios and networks who ignore either shift - whether the increasing sophistication of storytelling, or the constantly shifting sands of technological advancement - will be left behind."

[H/T: Viral Viral Videos]