Channel Four knows the score

Andy Duncan's talk at the Marketing Society's annual lecture was fairly predictable - especially if you've heard Andy Duncan speak before. But he does do a fantastic job of selling C4. At this year's Oxford Media Convention - the day the Celebrity Big Brother Storm truly broke - he looked haggard and nervous, and with some justification. But at Bafta for the Marketing Society do he was on top of his brief.

Channel 4's strategy is sound: Define a over-riding brand. Build a number of other channels (and digital-only offers) around it, each with their own clearly-defined brand, and market aggressively. One of the most interesting things he said was that in due course he fully expects TV channels to spend the same amount marketing and promoting their programmes as they do making them.

He was absolutely excellent answering questions - there were too many important people around, so I was too shy to ask the one I really wanted to: Was wank week an idea whose time had come too soon, and was that why he pulled it?