Chemistry: Walt (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse (Aaron Paul) watched by drug boss Gus (Giancarlo Esposito) in Breaking Bad The 54-year-old star spoke extensively about television's current "golden age" and named 17 television programs as proof. They were: The Sopranos, Rescue Me, Weeds, Homeland, Dexter, Six Feet Under, Deadwood, Damages, Sons of Anarchy, Oz, The Wire, True Blood, Boardwalk Empire, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad and House of Cards. "If [that list] isn't the most powerful and inescapable evidence that the king of television is the creatives, then I don't know what would convince you," he said. "And our challenge now is to keep the flame of this revolutionary programming alive by continuing to seek out new talent, nurture it, encourage it, challenge it, give it [a] home and the kind of autonomy that the past and present has proved it deserves."

Where it all began? The Sopranos. Spacey praised the US-headquartered online television portal Netflix, which commissioned the US remake of the iconic British political drama House of Cards and then released the entire series in one slab. That distribution model represents a drastic paradigm shift from traditional television, where pilots are filmed, some progress to series and episodes are drip-fed slowly to the audience. Taking risks ... Game of Thrones. "[It] proved one thing – the audience wants the control. They want freedom," Spacey said. "If they want to binge, as they've been doing on House of Cards, then we should let them binge.

"And through this new form of distribution, we have demonstrated that we have learnt the lesson that the music industry didn't learn: give people what they want, when they want it, in the form they want it in, at a reasonable price and they'll more likely pay for it rather than steal it." The Edinburgh International Television Festival has been held annually. The MacTaggart lecture is named after writer/director/producer James MacTaggart, who died in 1974. It has been delivered by a who's who of British media, including BBC chiefs Greg Dyke and Mark Thompson and three members of the Murdoch family: Rupert, James and, most recently, Elisabeth. Spacey is the first actor to deliver the speech in its history. The reason, he said candidly, was no doubt because he was the star of Netflix's remake of House of Cards. "[It is] one of the primary reasons, if not the only reason, I was asked to speak," he said. Spacey talked at length about his family growing up, and how television introduced him to new worlds and ideas.

"We had a house full of books and I was taken to the theatre often as a young child, but I was also captivated by television," he said. "Television showed me a world beyond my neighbourhood, people I had never met, places I had never seen. It fired my imagination, just like theatre and books had." Spacey criticised the Hollywood method of developing projects for television – its ubiquitous "pilot season" – and said that innovation, not volume, was needed to bring bigger, bolder and more successful ideas to the small screen. Last year, he said, 113 pilots were filmed and 35 were chosen to proceed to series. Only 13 survived to a second season. This year, 146 pilots were filmed and 56 are proceeding to series. "And we don't know the outcome of those yet," he said. The annual cost of "pilot season", he said, was between $US300 million ($330 million) and $US400 million. "We get what audiences want, they want quality. We get what the talent wants, artistic freedom. And the only way to protect talent and the quality of our work is for us to be innovative," he said.

"We also get what the corporations want, what the studios want, what the networks want: they want to make money and we need them to be profitable so they can continue to fund high quality production." To achieve that, he said, the television industry needs leadership "emboldened and empowered to support our mission; to have an environment . . . that is willing to take risks, experiment, be prepared to fail by aiming higher rather than playing it safe". He cited as an example the late-in-shelf-life success of the cable series Breaking Bad. When it launched in 2008 it was a modest hit, with a short episode order, and delivered solid but not remarkable ratings. As it now approaches its conclusion, it is widely being hailed as one of the greatest TV series of all time. "What [that] teaches us is that these shows need to be treated as assets to be nurtured, protected from the quick network trigger that can bail on a show before it has the chance to find its feet," Spacey said.

"After all, The Sopranos audience took four seasons to reach its apex [and] Seinfeld took a nearly five-year route to big-time ratings; its first four seasons didn't even get it into the Top 30." The key, he said, is patience and commitment. "And if that means ripping up the rulebook and scheduling in a different way, or playing with windows to build excitement and availability, then we should be prepared to try anything."