After poor reviews and falling attendances for last year's Big Chill festival it comes as no surprise that the Festival Republic organiser has announced that this year's festival has been cancelled.

Melvin Benn: “It is with a considerable amount of regret that I have decided not to go ahead with The Big Chill in 2012. I looked long and hard late last year at moving the date so it didn’t clash with the Olympics but the mix of the festival fans desire to keep the date and an inability to find an alternative date that works I plumped for maintaining the existing weekend. Sadly, the artist availability and confirmations we were achieving led me to conclude that I couldn’t risk going ahead with the event as an outdoor event this year. Efforts are being made to look to bring a smaller event indoors this year with the anticipation of Big Chill being back outdoors in 2013.”

However, punters at last year's Big Chill spoke of dwindling numbers at the festival and complained about overtly strong-arm security tactics, a prevalence of illegal anti-social substances amongst the youth and an infusion of acts new to the Big Chill, such as hip hop, seen as the antithesis of chill.. This combination undermined the original premise of the festival as the new management tried to both mainstream it and appeal to a broader cross section of youth sub-cultures.

Ultimately, they have failed, and they would rather blame the Olympics than themselves.